Cobb^s  Bill-of-Fare 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

By 

Irmn  S.  Cobb 

Author  of 

"The  Escape  of  Mr.  Trimm,"   "Back  Home," 
"Gobi's  Anatomy,"  etc. 

Illustrated  by 
Peter  Newell  and  James  Preston 


New  York 
George  H.  Doran  Company 


COPYRIGHT,  1911  1912, 
BY  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1913, 
BY  GKORGK  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Cob b*s  Bill-of-Fare 


To 

R.  H.  DAVIS 

(Nor  RICHARD  HARDING — 
THE  OTHER  ONE) 


759f?67 


Cobb^s  Bill-of-Fare 


AS  FOLLOWS 


PAGE 

I.   VlTTLES         .       .       .       .       .       .       .       13 

II.  Music   ...     .     .     .     .     .     47 

III.  ART  .     .     .     ,     .     .     .  %     .     8 1 

IV.  SPORT    .     .     .     „     .     .     .     .  113 


Cobb^s  Bill-of-Fare 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 
"I  now  greatly  desire  to  eat  some  regular  food."      15 

"Those  who  in  the  goodness  of  their  hearts  may 
undertake  a  search  for  the  sucking  pig." 35 

"Where  do  you  find  the  percentage  of  dyspeptics 
running  highest  ?"   41 

"She  tries  to  tear  all  its  front  teeth  out  with  her 
bare  hands."    . 51 

"Ro-hocked     in     the    cra-hadle    of    the    da-heep, 
I  la-hay  me  down  in  pe-heace  to  sa-leep!" 57 

"Shem  undoubtedly  sang  it  when  the  animals  were 
hungry."    61 

"And  I  enjoy  it  more  than  words  can  tell!".  ...      67 

"We  looked  in  vain  for  the  kind  of  pictures  that 
mother  used   to  make  and  father  used  to  buy."     83 

"The  inscrutable  smile  of  a  saleslady  would  make 
Mona  Lisa  seem  a  mere  amateur." 93 

"A  person  who  for  reasons  best  known  to  the  po 
lice  has  not  been  locked  up." 97 


CobPs  Bi //-of- Fare 


ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued 


PAGE 

"Collision  between  two  heavenly  bodies  or  prema 
ture  explosion  of  a  custard  pie."  .............  103 

"Everything  you  catch  is  second-hand." 119 

"He  could  beat  me  climbing,  but  at  panting  I  had 
him  licked  to  a  whisper."  125 

"She  was  not  much  larger  than  a  soapdish." 137 

"Think  of  being  laid  face  downward  firmly  across 
a  sinewy  knee  and  beaten  forty-love  with  one  of 
those  hard  catgut  rackets!"  ................  143 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare 


VITTLES 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

kittles 

UPON  a  certain  gladsome  occasion  a 
certain  man  went  into  a  certain  res 
taurant  in  a  certain  large  city,  being 
imbued  with  the  idea  that  he  desired  a  cer 
tain  kind  of  food.  Expense  was  with  him  no 
object.  The  coming  of  the  holidays  had 
turned  his  thoughts  backward  to  the  care 
free  days  of  boyhood  and  he  longed  for  the 
holidaying  provender  of  his  youth  with  a 
longing  that  was  as  wide  as  a  river  and  as 
deep  as  a  well. 

"Me,  I  have  tried  it  all,"  he  said  to  him 
self.  "I  have  been  down  the  line  on  this 
eating  proposition  from  alphabet  soup  to 
animal  crackers.  I  know  the  whole  thing, 
from  the  nine-dollar,  nine-course  banquet, 
with  every  course  bathed  freely  in  the  same 
kind  of  sauce  and  tasting  exactly  like  all  the 
other  courses,  to  the  quick  lunch,  where  the 


14     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

only  difference  between  clear  soup  and  beef 
broth  is  that  if  you  want  the  beef  broth  the 
waiter  sticks  his  thumb  into  the  clear  soup 
and  brings  it  along. 

"I  have  feasted  copiously  at  grand  hotels 
where  they  charge  you  corkage  on  your  own 
hot-water  bottle,  and  I  have  dallied  frugally 
with  the  forty-cent  table  d'hote  with  wine, 
when  the  victuals  were  the  product  of  the 
well-known  Sam  Brothers — Plot  and  Jet— 
and  the  wine  tasted  like  the  stuff  that  was 
left  over  from  graining  the  woodwork  for  a 
mahogany  finish. 

"I  now  greatly  desire  to  eat  some  regu 
lar  food,  and  if  such  a  thing  be  humanly 
possible  I  should  also  prefer  to  eat  it  in 
silence  unbroken  except  by  the  noises  I  make 
myself.  I  have  eaten  meals  backed  up  so 
close  to  the  orchestra  that  the  leader  and  I 
were  practically  wearing  the  same  pair  of 
suspenders.  I  have  been  howled  at  by  a 
troupe  of  Sicilian  brigands  armed  with  their 
national  weapons — the  garlic  and  the  guitar. 
I  have  been  tortured  by  mechanical  pianos 
and  automatic  melodeons,  and  I  crave  quiet. 
But  in  any  event  I  want  food.  I  cannot 


"  I  NOW  GREATLY  DESIRE  TO  EAT 
SOME  REGULAR  FOOD  " 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     17 

spare  the  time  to  travel  nine  hundred  miles 
to  get  i*,  and  I  must,  therefore,  take  a  chance 
here." 

So,  as  above  stated,  he  entered  this  certain 
restaurant  and  seated  himself;  and  as  soon 
as  the  Hungarian  string  band  had  desisted 
from  playing  an  Italian  air  orchestrated  by 
a  German  composer  he  got  the  attention  of 
an  omnibus,  who  was  Greek,  and  the  bus 
enlisted  the  assistance  of  a  side  waiter,  he 
being  French,  and  the  side  waiter  in  time 
brought  to  him  the  head  waiter,  regarding 
whom  I  violate  no  confidence  in  stating  that 
he  was  Swiss.  The  man  I  have  been  quoting 
then  drew  from  his  pockets  a  number  of 
bank  notes  and  piled  them  up  slowly,  cne  by 
one,  alongside  his  plate.  Beholding  the  de 
nominations  of  these  bills  the  head  waiter 
with  difficulty  restrained  himself  from  kiss 
ing  the  hungry  man  upon  the  bald  spot  on 
his  head.  The  sight  of  a  large  bill  inva 
riably  quickens  the  better  nature  of  a  head 
waiter. 

"Now,  then,"  said  the  enhungered  one,  "I 
would  have  speech  with  you.  I  desire  food 
— food  suitable  for  a  free-born  American 


18     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

stomach  on  such  a  day  as  this.     No,  you 
needn't  wave  that  menu  at  me.     I  can  shut 
my  eyes  and  remember  the  words  and  music 
of  every  menu  that  ever  was  printed.   I  don't 
know  what  half  of  it  means  because  I  am  no 
court  interpreter,  but  I  can  remember  it.    I 
can  sing  it,  and  if  I  had  my  clarinet  here  I 
could  play  it.  Heave  the  menu  over  the  side 
of  the  boat  and  listen  to  me.    What  I  want  is 
just  plain  food — food  like  mother  used  to 
make  and  mother's  fair-haired  boy  used  to 
eat.    We  will  start  off  with  turkey — turkey 
a  la  America,  understand;  turkey  that  is  all 
to  the  Hail  Columbia,  Happy  Land.    With 
it  I  want  some  cramberry  sauce — no,  not 
cranberry,  I  guess  I  know  it's  real  name- 
some  cramberry  sauce;   and  some  mashed 
potatoes  —  mashed    with    enthusiasm    and 
nothing  else,   if  you   can   arrange   it — and 
some  scalloped   oysters   and  maybe   a   few 
green  peas.    Likewise  I  want  a  large  cup  of 
coffee   right  along  with   these   things— not 
served  afterward  in  a  misses'  and  children's 
sized  cup,  but  along  with  the  dinner." 
"Salad?"  suggested  the  head  waiter,  re- 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare     19 

luctantly  withdrawing  his  fascinated  vision 
from  the  pile  of  bills.  "Salad?"  he  said. 

"No  salad,"  said  the  homesick  stranger, 
"not  unless  you  could  chop  me  up  some 
lettuce  and  powder  it  with  granulated  sugar 
and  pour  a  little  vinegar  over  it  and  bring  it 
in  to  me  with  the  rest  of  the  grub.  Where 
I  was  raised  we  always  had  chewing  tobacco 
for  the  salad  course,  anyhow." 

The  head  waiter's  whole  being  recoiled 
from  the  bare  prospect.  He  seemed  on  the 
point  of  swooning,  but  looked  at  the  money 
and  came  to. 

"Dessert?"  he  added,  poising  a  pencil. 

"Well,"  said  the  man  reflectively,  "I  don't 
suppose  you  could  fix  me  up  some  ambrosia 
— that's  sliced  oranges  with  grated  cocoanut 
on  top.  And  in  this  establishment  I  doubt 
if  you  know  anything  about  boiled  custard, 
with  egg  kisses  bobbing  round  it  and  sunken 
reefs  of  sponge  cake  underneath.  So  I  guess 
I'd  better  compromise  on  some  plum  pud 
ding;  but  mind  you,  not  the  imported  Eng 
lish  plum  pudding.  English  plum  pud 
ding  is  not  a  food,  it's  a  missile,  and  when 
eaten  it  is  a  concealed  deadly  weapon.  I 


20     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

want  an  American  plum  pudding.  Mark 
well  my  words — an  American  plum  pud 
ding. 

"And,"  he  concluded,  "if  you  can  bring 
me  these  things,  just  so,  without  any  strange 
African  sauces  or  weird  Oriental  fixings  or 
trans-Atlantic  goo  stirred  into  them  or 
poured  on  to  them  or  breathed  upon  them,  I 
shall  be  very  grateful  to  you,  and  in  addi 
tion  I  shall  probably  make  you  independ 
ently  wealthy  for  life." 

It  was  quite  evident  that  the  head  waiter 
regarded  him  as  a  lunatic — perhaps  only  a 
lunatic  in  a  mild  form  and  undoubtedly  one 
cushioned  with  ready  money — but  neverthe 
less  a  lunatic.  Yet  he  indicated  by  a  stately 
bow  that  he  would  do  the  best  he  could 
under  the  circumstances,  and  withdrew  to 
take  the  matter  up  with  the  house  com 
mittee. 

"Now  this,"  said  the  man,  "is  going  to  be 
something  like.  To  be  sure  the  table  is  not 
set  right.  As  I  remember  how  things  used 
to  look  at  home  there  should  be  a  mustache 
cup  at  Uncle  Hiram's  plate,  so  he  could 
drink  his  floating  island  without  getting  his 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare     21 

cream-separators  mussy,  and  there  ought  to 
be  a  vinegar  cruet  at  one  end  and  a  silver 
cake  basket  at  the  other  and  about  nine  kinds 
of  pickles  and  jellies  scattered  round ;  and  in 
the  center  of  the  table  there  should  be  a 
winter  bouquet — a  nice,  hard,  firm,  dark  red 
winter  bouquet — containing,  among  other 
things,  a  sheaf  of  wheat,  a  dried  cockscomb 
and  a  couple  of  oak  galls.  Yet  if  the  real 
provender  is  forthcoming  I  can  put  up  with 
the  absence  of  the  proper  settings  and  deco 
rations." 

He  had  ample  leisure  for  these  thoughts, 
because,  as  you  yourself  may  have  noticed, 
in  a  large  restaurant  when  you  order  any 
thing  that  is  out  of  the  ordinary — which 
means  anything  that  is  ordinary — it  takes 
time  to  put  the  proposition  through  the 
proper  channels.  The  wraiter  lays  your  ap 
plication  before  the  board  of  governors,  and 
after  the  board  of  governors  has  disposed 
of  things  coming  under  the  head  of  unfin 
ished  business  and  good  of  the  order  it  takes 
a  vote,  and  if  nobody  blackballs  you  the 
treasurer  is  instructed  to  draw  a  warrant  and 


22     Cobb's  Bt //-of- Fare 

the  secretary  engrosses  appropriate  resolu 
tions,  and  your  order  goes  to  the  cook. 

But  finally  this  man's  food  arrived.  And 
he  looked  at  it  and  sniffed  at  it  daintily- 
like  a  reluctant  patient  going  under  the 
ether— and  he  tasted  of  it;  and  then  he  put 
his  face  down  in  his  hands  and  burst  into 
low,  poignant  moans.  For  it  wasn't  the  real 
thing  at  all.  The  stuffing  of  the  turkey 
defied  chemical  analysis;  and,  moreover,  the 
turkey  before  serving  should  have  been 
dusted  with  talcum  powder  and  fitted  with 
dress-shields,  it  being  plainly  a  crowning 
work  of  the  art  preservative — meaning  by 
that  the  cold-storage  packing  and  pickling 
industry.  And  if  you  can  believe  what  Doc 
tor  Wiley  says — and  if  you  can't  believe  the 
man  who  has  dedicated  his  life  to  warning 
you  against  the  things  which  you  put  in  your 
mouth  to  steal  away  your  membranes,  whom 
can  you  believe? — the  cranberry  sauce  be 
longed  in  a  paint  store  and  should  have  been 
labeled  Easter-egg  dye,  and  the  green  peas 
were  green  with  Paris  green. 

As  for  the  plum  pudding,  it  was  one  of 
those  burglar-proof,  enamel-finished  prod- 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     23 

ucts  that  prove  the  British  to  be  indeed  a 
hardy  race.  And,  of  course,  they  hadn't 
brought  him  his  coffee  along  with  his  din 
ner,  the  management  having  absolutely  re 
fused  to  permit  of  a  thing  so  revolutionary 
and  unprecedented  and  one  so  calculated  to 
upset  the  whole  organization.  And  at  the 
last  minute  the  racial  instincts  of  the  cook 
had  triumphed  over  his  instructions,  and  he 
had  impartially  imbued  everything  with  his 
native  brews,  gravies,  condiments,  season 
ings,  scents,  preservatives,  embalming  fluids, 
liquid  extracts  and  perfumeries.  So,  after 
weeping  unrestrainedly  for  a  time,  the  man 
paid  the  check,  which  was  enormous,  and 
tipped  everybody  freely  and  went  away  in 
despair  and,  I  think,  committed  suicide  on 
an  empty  stomach.  At  any  rate,  he  came 
no  more.  The  moral  of  this  fable  is,  there 
fore,  that  it  can't  be  done. 

But  why  can't  it  be  done?  I  ask  you 
that  and  pause  for  a  reply.  Why  can't  it  be 
done?  It  is  conceded,  I  take  it,  that  in  the 
beginning  our  cookery  was  essentially  of  the 
soil.  Of  course  when  our  forebears  came 
over  they  brought  along  with  them  certain 


24     CobFs  Bitt-of-Fare 

inherent  and  inherited  Old  World  notions 
touching  on  the  preparation  of  raw  pro 
vender  in  order  to  make  it  suitable  for 
human  consumption;  but  these  doubtless 
were  soon  fused  and  amalgamated  with  the 
cooking  and  eating  customs  of  the  original 
or  copper-colored  inhabitants.  The  differ 
ence  in  environment  and  climate  and  condi 
tions,  together  with  the  amplified  wealth  of 
native  supplies,  did  the  rest.  In  Merrie 
England,  as  all  travelers  know,  there  are  but 
three  staple  vegetables — to  wit,  boiled  pota 
toes,  boiled  turnips,  and  a  second  helping  of 
the  boiled  potatoes.  But  here,  spread  be 
fore  the  gladdened  vision  of  the  newly 
arrived,  and  his  to  pick  and  choose  from, 
was  a  boundless  expanse  of  new  foodstuffs- 
birds,  beasts  and  fishes,  fruits,  vegetables 
and  berries,  roots,  herbs  and  sprouts.  He 
furnished  the  demand  and  the  soil  was  there 
competently  with  the  supply. 

We  owe  a  lot  to  our  red  brother.  From 
him  we  derived  a  knowledge  of  the  values 
and  attractions  of  the  succulent  clam,  and 
he  didn't  cook  a  clam  so  that  it  tasted  like 
O'Somebody's  Heels  of  New  Rubber  either. 


Gobb  *j  Bill-of-Fare     25 

From  the  Indian  we  got  the  original  idea 
of  the  shore  dinner  and  the  barbecue,  the 
planked  shad  and  the  hoecake.  By  follow 
ing  in  his  footsteps  we  learned  about  succo 
tash  and  hominy.  He  conferred  upon  us 
the  inestimable  boon  of  his  maize — hence 
corn  bread,  corn  fritters,  fried  corn  and 
roasting  ears;  also  his  pumpkin  and  his 
sweet  potato — hence  the  pumpkin  pie  of  the 
North  and  its  blood  brother  of  the  South, 
the  sweet-potato  pie.  From  the  Indian  we 
got  the  tomato — -let  some  agriculturist  cor 
rect  me  if  I  err — though  the  oldest  inhabi 
tant  can  still  remember  when  we  called  it  a 
love  apple  and  regarded  it  as  poisonous. 
From  him  we  inherited  the  crook-neck 
squash  and  the  okra  gumbo  and  the  rattle 
snake  watermelon  and  the  wild  goose  plum, 
and  many  another  delectable  thing. 

So,  out  of  all  this  and  from  all  this  our 
ancestors  evolved  cults  of  cookery  which, 
though  they  differed  perhaps  as  between 
themselves,  were  all  purely  American  and 
all  absolutely  unapproachable.  France  lent 
a  strain  to  New  Orleans  cooking  and  Spain 
did  the  same  for  California.  Scrapple  was 


26     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

Pennsylvania's,  terrapin  was  Maryland's, 
the  baked  bean  was  Massachusetts',  and 
along  with  a  few  other  things  spoon-bread 
ranked  as  Kentucky's  fairest  product.  In 
diana  had  dishes  of  which  Texas  wotted  not, 
nor  kilowatted  either,  this  being  before  the 
day  of  electrical  cooking  contrivances.  Vir 
ginia,  mother  of  presidents  and  of  natural- 
born  cooks,  could  give  and  take  cookery 
notions  from  Vermont.  Likewise,  this  con 
dition  developed  the  greatest  collection  of 
cooks,  white  and  black  alike,  that  the  world 
has  ever  seen.  They  were  inspired  cooks, 
needing  no  notes,  no  printed  score  to  guide 
them.  They  could  burn  up  all  the  cook 
books  that  ever  were  printed  and  still  cook. 
They  cooked  by  ear. 

And  perhaps  they  still  do.  If  so,  may 
Heaven  bless  and  preserve  them!  Some 
carping  critics  may  contend  that  our  grand 
fathers  and  grandmothers  lacked  the  proper 
knowledge  of  how  to  serve  a  meal  in  courses. 
Let  'em.  Let  'em  carp  until  they're  as  black 
in  the  face  as  a  German  carp.  For  real  food 
never  yet  needed  any  vain  pomp  and  cir 
cumstance  to  make  it  attractive.  It  stands 


Cobb  'j  Bill-of-Fare     21 

on  its  own  merits,  not  on  the  scenic  effects. 
When  you  really  have  something  to  eat  you 
don't  need  to  worry  trying  to  think  up  the 
French  for  napkin.  Perhaps  there  may  be 
come  among  us  here  on  this  continent  who, 
on  beholding  a  finger-bowl  for  the  first  time, 
glanced  down  into  its  pellucid  depths  and 
wondered  what  had  become  of  the  gold  fish. 
There  may  have  been  a  few  who  needed  a 
laprobe  drawn  up  well  over  the  chest  when 
eating  grapefruit  for  the  first  time.  Indeed, 
there  may  have  been  a  few  even  whose  exe 
cution  in  regard  to  consuming  soup  out  of 
the  side  of  the  spoon  was  a  thing  calculated 
to  remind  you  of  a  bass  tuba  player  empty 
ing  his  instrument  at  the  end  of  a  hard  street 
parade. 

But  I  doubt  it.  These  stories  were  prob 
ably  the  creations  of  the  professional  hu 
morists  in  the  first  place.  Those  who  are 
given  real  food  to  eat  may  generally  be 
depended  upon  to  do  the  eating  without 
undue  noise  or  excitement.  The  gross  per 
son  featured  in  the  comic  papers,  who  con 
sumes  his  food  with  such  careless  abandon 
that  it  is  hard  to  tell  whether  the  front 


28     Cob Ps  Bill-of-Fare 

of  his  vest  was  originally  drygoods  or 
groceries,  either  doesn't  exist  in  real  life  or 
else  never  had  any  food  that  was  worth 
eating,  and  it  didn't  make  any  difference 
whether  he  put  it  on  the  inside  of  his  chest 
or  the  outside. 

Only  a  short  time  ago  I  saw  a  whole 
turkey  served  for  a  Thanksgiving  feast  at  a 
large  restaurant.  It  vaunted  itself  as  a 
regular  turkey  and  was  extensively  charged 
for  as  such  on  the  bill.  It  wasn't  though. 
It  was  an  ancient  and  a  shabby  ruin — a 
genuine  antique  if  ever  there  was  one,  with 
those  high-polished  knobs  all  down  the 
front,  like  an  old-fashioned  highboy,  and 
Chippendale  legs.  To  make  up  for  its 
manifold  imperfections  the  chef  back  in  the 
kitchen  had  crowded  it  full  of  mysterious 
laboratory  products  and  then  varnished  it 
over  with  a  waterproof  glaze  or  shellac, 
which  rendered  it  durable  without  making 
it  edible.  Just  to  see  that  turkey  was  a  thing 
calculated  to  set  the  mind  harking  backward 
to  places  and  times  when  there  had  been  real 
turkeys  to  eat. 

Back  yonder  in  the  old  days  we  were  a 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     29 

simple  and  a  husky  race,  weren't  we?  Boys 
and  girls  were  often  fourteen  years  old' be 
fore  they  knew  oysters  didn't  grow  in  a  can. 
Even  grown  people  knew  nothing,  except  by 
vague  hearsay,  of  cheese  so  runny  that  if  you 
didn't  care  to  eat  it  you  could  drink  it. 
There  was  one  traveled  person  then  living 
who  was  reputed  to  have  once  gone  up  to 
the  North  somewhere  and  partaken  of  a 
watermelon  that  had  had  a  plug  cut  in  it 
and  a  whole  quart  of  imported  real  Paris — • 
France — champagne  wine  poured  in  the 
plugged  place.  This,  however,  was  gener 
ally  regarded  as  a  gross  exaggeration  of  the 
real  facts. 

But  there  was  a  kind  of  a  turkey  that  they 
used  to  serve  in  those  parts  on  high  state 
occasions.  It  was  a  turkey  that  in  his 
younger  days  ranged  wild  in  the  woods  and 
ate  the  mast.  At  the  frosted  coming  of  the 
fall  they  penned  him  up  and  fed  him  grain 
to  put  an  edge  of  fat  on  his  lean;  and  then 
fate  descended  upon  him  and  he  died  the 
ordained  death  of  his  kind.  But,  oh!  the 
glorious  resurrection  when  he  reached  the 
table!  You  sat  with  weapons  poised  and 


30     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

ready — a  knife  in  the  right  hand,  a  fork  in 
the  left  and  a  spoon  handy — and  looked 
upon  him  and  watered  at  the  mouth  until 
you  had  riparian  rights. 

His  breast  had  the  vast  brown  fullness 
that  you  see  in  pictures  of  old  Flemish 
friars.  His  legs  were  like  rounded  col 
umns  and  unadorned,  moreover,  with  those 
superfluous  paper  frills;  and  his  tail  was 
half  as  big  as  your  hand  and  it  protruded 
grandly,  like  the  rudder  of  a  treasure-ship, 
and  had  flanges  of  sizzled  richness  on  it. 
Here  was  no  pindling  fowl  that  had  taken 
the  veil  and  lived  the  cloistered  life;  here 
was  no  wiredrawn  and  trained-down  cross 
country  turkey,  but  a  lusty  giant  of  a  bird 
that  would  have  been  a  cassowary,  probably, 
or  an  emu,  if  he  had  lived,  his  bosom  a 
white  mountain  of  lusciousness,  his  interior 
a  Golconda  and  not  a  Golgotha.  At  the 
touch  of  the  steel  his  skin  crinkled  delicately 
and  fell  away;  his  tissues  flaked  off  in  tender 
strips;  and  from  him  arose  a  bouquet  of 
smells  more  varied  and  more  delectable 
than  anything  ever  turned  out  by  the  justly 
celebrated  Islands  of  Spice.  It  was  a  sin 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare     31 

to  cut  him  up  and  a  crime  to  leave  him  be. 

He  had  not  been  stuffed  by  a  taxidermist 
or  a  curio  collector,  but  by  the  master  hand 
of  one  of  those  natural-born  home  cooks — 
stuffed  with  corn  bread  dressing  that  had 
oysters  or  chestnuts  or  pecans  stirred  into  it 
until  it  was  a  veritable  mine  of  goodness, 
and  this  stuffing  had  caught  up  and  retained 
all  the  delectable  drippings  and  essences  of 
his  being,  and  his  flesh  had  the  savor  of  the 
things  upon  which  he  had  lived — the  sweet 
acorns  and  beechnuts  of  the  woods,  the  but 
tery  goobers  of  the  plowed  furrows,  the 
shattered  corn  of  the  horse  yard. 

Nor  was  he  a  turkey  to  be  eaten  by  the 
mere  slice.  At  least,  nobody  ever  did  eat 
him  that  way — you  ate  him  by  rods,  poles 
and  perches,  by  townships  and  by  sections- 
ate  him  from  his  neck  to  his  hocks  and  back 
again,  from  his  throat  latch  to  his  crupper, 
from  center  to  circumference,  and  from  pit 
to  dome,  finding  something  better  all  the 
time;  and  when  his  frame  was  mainly  de 
nuded  and  loomed  upon  the  platter  like  a 
scaffolding,  you  dug  into  his  cadaver  and 
found  there  small  hidden  joys  and  titbits. 


32     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

You  ate  until  the  pressure  of  your  waistband 
stopped  your  watch  and  your  vest  flew  open 
like  an  engine-house  door  and  your  stomach 
was  pushing  you  over  on  your  back  and 
sitting  upon  you,  and  then  you  half  closed 
your  eyes  and  dreamed  of  cold-sliced  turkey 
for  supper,  turkey  hash  for  breakfast  the 
next  morning  and  turkey  soup  made  of  the 
bones  of  his  carcass  later  on.  For  each  state 
of  that  turkey  would  be  greater  than  the 
last. 

There  still  must  be  such  turkeys  as  this 
one  somewhere.  Somewhere  in  this  broad 
and  favored  land,  untainted  by  notions  of 
foreign  cookery  and  unvisited  by  New  York 
and  Philadelphia  people  who  insist  on  call 
ing  the  waiter  garqon,  when  his  name  is 
Gabe  or  Roscoe,  there  must  be  spots  where 
a  turkey  is  a  turkey  and  not  a  cold-storage 
corpse.  And  this  being  the  case,  why  don't 
those  places  advertise,  so  that  by  the  hun 
dreds  and  the  thousands  men  who  live  in 
hotels  might  come  from  all  over  in  the 
fall  of  the  year  and  just  naturally  eat 
themselves  to  death? 

Perchance   also   the   sucking  pig  of   the 


Cob  Ps  Bill-of-Fare     33 

good  old  days  still  prevails  in  certain  shel 
tered  vales  and  glades.  He,  too,  used  to 
have  his  vogue  at  holiday  times.  Because 
the  gods  did  love  him  he  died  young — died 
young  and  tender  and  unspoiled  by  the 
world — and  then  everybody  else  did  love 
him  too.  For  he  was  barbered  twice  over 
and  shampooed  to  a  gracious  pinkiness  by 
a  skilled  hand,  and  then,  being  basted,  he 
was  roasted  whole  with  a  smile  on  his  lips 
and  an  apple  in  his  mouth,  and  sometimes  a 
bow  of  red  ribbon  on  his  tail,  and  his  juices 
from  within  ran  down  his  smooth  flanks  and 
burnished  him  to  perfection.  His  interior 
was  crammed  with  stuff  and  things  and 
truck  and  articles  of  that  general  nature— 
I'm  no  cooking  expert  to  go  into  further 
particulars,  but  whatever  the  stuffing  was,  it 
was  appropriate  and  timely  and  suitable,  I 
know  that,  and  there  was  onion  in  it  and 
savory  herbs,  and  it  was  exactly  what  a 
sucking  pig  needed  to  bring  out  all  that  was 
good  and  noble  in  him. 

You  began  operations  by  taking  a  man's- 
size  slice  out  of  his  midriff,  bringing  with  it 
a  couple  of  pinky  little  rib  bones,  and  then 


34     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

you  ate  your  way  through  him  and  along 
him  in  either  direction  or  both  directions 
until  you  came  out  into  the  open  and  fell 
back  satiated  and  filled  with  the  sheer  joy 
of  living,  and  greased  to  the  eyebrows.  I 
should  like  to  ask  at  this  time  if  there  is  any 
section  where  this  brand  of  sucking  pig 
remains  reasonably  common  and  readily 
available?  In  these  days  of  light  house 
keeping  and  kitchenettes  and  gas  stoves  and 
electric  cookers,  is  there  any  oven  big 
enough  to  contain  him?  Does  he  still  linger 
on  or  is  he  now  known  in  his  true  perfection 
only  on  the  magazine  covers  and  in  the 
Christmas  stories? 

As  a  further  guide  to  those  who  in  the 
goodness  of  their  hearts  may  undertake  a 
search  for  him  in  his  remaining  haunts  and 
refuges,  it  should  be  stated  that  he  was  no 
German  wild  boar,  or  English  pork  pie  on 
the  hoof,  and  that  he  was  never  cooked 
French  style,  or  doctored  up  with  anchovies, 
caviar,  marrons  glaces,  pickled  capers  out  of 
a  bottle— where  many  of  the  best  capers  of 
the  pickled  variety  come  from— imported 
truffles,  Mexican  tamales  or  Hawaiian  poi. 


"THOSE  WHO  IN  THE  GOODNESS  OF  THEIR  HEARTS 
MAY  UNDERTAKE  A  SEARCH  FOR  THE  SUCKING  PIG' 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     37 

He  was — and  is,  if  he  still  exists — just  a 
plain  little  North  American  baby-shoat 
cooked  whole.  And  don't  forget  the  red 
apple  in  his  mouth.  None  genuine  without 
this  trademark. 

But,  shucks!  what's  the  use  of  talking  that 
way?  Patriotism  is  not  dead  and  a  demo 
cratic  form  of  government  still  endures,  and 
surely  real  sucking  pigs  are  still  being 
cooked  and  served  whole  somewhere  this 
very  day.  And  in  that  same  neighborhood, 
if  it  lies  to  the  eastward,  there  are  cooks  who 
know  the  art  of  planking  a  shad  in  season- 
not  the  arrangement  of  the  effete  East,  con 
sisting  of  a  greased  skin  wrapped  round  a 
fine-tooth  comb  and  reposing  on  a  charred 
clapboard — but  a  real  shad;  and  if  it  lies 
to  the  southward  one  will  surely  find  in  the 
same  vicinity  a  possum  of  a  prevalent  dark 
brown  tint,  with  sweet  potatoes  baked  under 
him  and  a  certain  inimitable,  indescribable 
dark  rich  gravy  surrounding  him,  and  on 
the  side  corn  pones — without  any  sugar  in 
them.  I  think  probably  the  reason. why  the 
possum  doesn't  flourish  in  the  North  is  that 
they  insist  on  tacking  an  O  on  to  his  name, 


38     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

simply  because  some  misguided  writer  of 
dictionaries  ordained  it  so.  A  possum  is  not 
Irish,  nor  is  he  Scotch.  His  name  is  not 
Opossum,  neither  is  it  MacPossum.  He 
belongs  to  an  old  Southern  family  and  his 
name  is  just  possum. 

Once  I  saw  ostensible  'possum  at  a  French 
restaurant  in  New  York.  It  was  advertised 
as  Opossum,  Southern  style,  and  it  was 
chopped  up  fine  and  cooked  in  a  sort  of 
casserole  effect,  with  green  peas  and  carrots 
and  various  other  things  mixed  in  along 
with  it.  The  quivering  sensations  which 
were  felt  throughout  the  South  on  this  occa 
sion,  and  which  at  the  time  were  mistaken 
for  earthquake  tremors,  were  really  caused 
by  so  many  Southern  cooks  turning  over 
petulantly  in  their  graves. 

Still  going  on  the  assumption  that  the 
turkey  and  the  sucking  pig  and  their  kin 
dred  spirits  are  yet  to  be  found  among  us  or 
among  some  of  us,  anyhow,  it  is  only  logical 
to  assume  that  the  food  is  not  served  in 
courses  at  the  ratio  of  a  little  of  everything 
and  not  enough  of  anything,  but  that  it  is 
brought  on  and  spread  before  the  company 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     39 

all  together  and  at  once — the  turkey  or  the 
pig  or  the  ham  or  the  chickens;  the  mashed 
potatoes  overflowing  their  receptacle  like 
drifted  snow;  the  celery;  the  scalloped 
oysters  in  a  dish  like  a  crock;  the  jelly  layer 
cake,  the  fruit  cake  and  Prince  of  Wales 
cake;  and  in  addition,  scattered  about  hither 
and  yon,  all  the  different  kinds  of  preserves 
— pusserves,  to  use  the  proper  title — includ 
ing  sweet  peach  pickles  dimpled  with  cloves 
and  melting  away  in  their  own  sweetness, 
and  watermelon-rind  pickles  cut  into  cubes 
just  big  enough  to  make  one  bite — that  is  to 
say  in  cubes  about  three  inches  square — and 
the  various  kinds  of  jellies — crab-apple, 
currant,  grape  and  quince — quivering  in  an 
ecstacy  as  though  at  their  very  goodness,  and 
casting  upon  the  white  cloth  where  the  light 
catches  them  all  the  reflected,  dancing  tints 
of  beryl  and  amethyst,  ruby  and  garnet — 
crown-jewels  in  the  diadem  of  real  food. 

People  who  eat  dinners  like  this  must,  by 
the  very  nature  of  things,  cling  also  to  the 
ancient  North  American  custom  of  starting 
the  day  with  an  amount  of  regular  food 
called  collectively  a  breakfast.  This,  of 


40     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

course,  does  not  mean  what  the  dweller  in 
the  city  by  the  seaboard  calls  a  breakfast, 
he  knowing  no  better,  poor  wretch — a  swal 
low  of  tea,  a  bite  of  a  cold  baker's  roll,  a 
plate  of  gruel  mayhap,  or  pap,  and  a  sticky 
spoonful  of  the  national  marmalade  of  Per 
fidious  Albumen,  as  the  poet  has  called  it, 
followed  by  a  slap  at  the  lower  part  of  the 
face  with  a  napkin  and  a  series  of  V-shaped 
hiccoughs  ensuing  all  the  morning.  No, 
indeed. 

In  speaking  thus  of  breakfast,  I  mean  a 
real  breakfast.  If  it's  in  New  England 
there'll  be  doughnuts  and  pies  on  the  table, 
and  not  those  sickly  convict  labor  pies  of 
the  city  either,  with  the  prison  pallor  yet 
upon  them,  but  brown,  crusty,  full-chested 
pies.  And  if  it's  down  South  there  will  be 
hot  waffles  and  fresh  New  Orleans  mo 
lasses;  and  if  it's  in  any  section  of  our  coun 
try,  north  or  south,  east  or  west,  such  comfits 
and  kickshaws  as  genuine  country  smoked 
sausage,  put  up  in  bags  and  spiced  like 
Araby  the  Blest,  and  fresh  eggs  fried  in 
pairs — never  less  than  in  pairs — with  their 
lovely  orbed  yolks  turned  heavenward  like 


:  WHERE   DO  YOU   FIND   THE   PERCENTAGE   OF   DYSPEPTICS 
RUNNING  HIGHEST?" 


Cob Ps  Bill-of-Fare     43 

the  topaz  eyes  of  beauteous  prayerful 
blondes ;  and  slices  of  home-cured  ham  with 
the  taste  of  the  hickory  smoke  and  also  of 
the  original  hog  delicately  blended  in  them, 
and  marbled  with  fat  and  lean,  like  the 
edges  of  law  books;  and  cornbeef  hash,  and 
flaky  hot  biscuits ;  and  an  assortment  of  those 
same  pickles  and  preserves  already  men 
tioned;  the  whole  being  calculated  to  make 
a  hungry  man  open  his  mouth  until  his  face 
resembles  the  general-delivery  window  at 
the  post-office — and  sail  right  in. 

The  cry  has  been  raised  that  American 
cooking  is  responsible  for  American  dys 
pepsia,  and  that  as  a  race  we  are  given  to 
pouring  pepsin  pellets  down  ourselves  be 
cause  of  the  food  our  ancestors  poured  down 
themselves.  This  is  a  base  calumny.  Old 
John  J.  Calumny  himself  never  coined  a 
baser  one.  You  have  only  to  look  about  you 
to  know  the  truth  of  the  situation,  which  is, 
that  the  person  with  the  least  digestion  is 
the  one  who  always  does  the  most  for  it,  and 
that  those  who  eat  the  most  have  the  least 
trouble.  Where  do  you  find  the  percentage 
of  dyspeptics  running  highest,  in  the  coun- 


44     Cob b's  Bill-of-Fare 

try  or  the  city?  Where  do  you  find  the  stout 
woman  who  is  banting  as  she  pants  and 
panting  as  she  bants?  Again,  the  city. 
Where  do  you  encounter  the  unhappy  male 
creature  who  has  been  told  that  the  only 
cure  for  his  dyspepsia  is  to  be  a  Rebecca  at 
the  Well  and  drink  a  gallon  of  water  before 
each  meal  and  then  go  without  the  meal, 
thus  compelling  him  to  double  in  both  roles 
and  first  be  Rebecca  and  then  be  the  Well? 
Where  do  you  see  so  many  of  those  misera 
ble  ones  who  have  the  feeling,  after  eating, 
that  rude  hands  are  tearing  the  tapestries 
off  the  walls  of  their  respective  dining 
rooms? 

Not  in  the  country,  where,  happily,  food 
is  perhaps  yet  food.  In  the  city,  that's 
where — in  the  cities,  where  they  have 
learned  to  cook  food  and  to  serve  it  and  to 
eat  it  after  a  fashion  different  from  the 
fashions  their  grandsires  followed. 

That's  a  noble  slogan  which  has  lately 
been  promulgated — See  America  First.  But 
while  we're  doing  so  wouldn't  it  be  a  fine 
idea  to  try  to  see  some  American  cooking? 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 


MUSIC 


Cobb  "s  Bill-of-  Fare 


Music 

IF  YOU,   the  reader,  are  anything  like 
me,  the  writer,  it  happens  to  you  about 
every  once  in  so  long  that  some  well- 
meaning  but  semi-witted  friend  rigs  a  dead 
fall  for  you,  and  traps  you  and  carries  you 
off,  a  helpless  captive,  for  an  evening  among 
the  real  music-lovers. 

Catching  you,  so  to  speak,  with  your  de 
fense  leveled  and  your  breastworks  un 
manned,  he  speaks  to  you  substantially  as 
follows:  "Old  man,  we're  going  to  have  a 
few  people  up  to  the  house  tonight — just  a 
little  informal  affair,  you  understand,  with 
a  song  or  two  and  some  music — and  the 
missus  and  I  would  appreciate  it  mightily 
if  you'd  put  on  your  Young  Prince  Charm- 
ings  and  drop  in  on  us  along  toward  eight. 
How  about  it — can  we  count  on  you  to  be 
among  those  prominently  present?" 


48     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

Forewarned  is  forearmed,  and  you  know 
all  about  this  person  already.  You  know 
him  to  be  one  of  the  elect  in  the  most  ex 
clusive  musical  coterie  of  your  fair  city, 
wherever  your  fair  city  may  be.  You  know 
him  to  be  on  terms  of  the  utmost  intimacy 
with  the  works  of  all  the  great  composers. 
Bill  Opus  and  Jeremiah  Fugue  have  no 
secrets  from  him — none  whatever — and  in 
conversation  he  creates  the  impression  that 
old  Issy  Sonata  was  his  first  cousin.  He  can 
tell  you  offhand  which  one  of  the  Shuberts 
—Lee  or  Jake — wrote  that  Serenade.  He 
speaks  of  Mozart  and  Beethoven  in  such  a 
way  a  stranger  would  probably  get  the  idea 
that  Mote  and  Bate  used  to  work  for  his 
folks.  He  can  go  to  a  musical  show,  and 
while  the  performance  is  going  on  he  can 
tell  everybody  in  his  section  just  which  com 
poser  each  song  number  was  stolen  from, 
humming  the  original  air  aloud  to  show  the 
points  of  resemblance.  He  can  do  this,  I 
say,  and,  what  is  more,  he  does  do  it.  At 
the  table  d'hote  place,  when  the  Neapolitan 
troubadours  come  out  in  their  little  green 
jackets  and  their  wide  red  sashes  he  is  right 


Cob Ps  Bit l-of- Fare     49 

there  at  the  middle  table,  poised  and  wait 
ing;  and  when  they  put  their  heads  together 
and  lean  in  toward  the  center  and  sing  their 
national  air,  Come  Into  the  Garlic,  Maud, 
it  is  he  who  beats  time  for  them  with  his 
handy  lead-pencil,  only  pausing  occasion 
ally  to  point  out  errors  in  technic  and  execu 
tion  on  the  part  of  the  performers.  He  is 
that  kind  of  a  pest,  and  you  know  it. 

What  you  should  do  under  these  circum 
stances,  after  he  has  invited  you  to  come  up 
to  his  house,  would  be  to  look  him  straight 
in  the  eye  and  say  to  him :  "Well,  old  chap, 
that's  awfully  kind  of  you  to  include  me  in 
your  little  musical  party,  and  just  to  show 
you  how  much  I  appreciate  it  and  how  I 
feel  about  it  here's  something  for  you."  And 
then  hit  him  right  where  his  hair  parts  with 
a  cut-glass  paperweight  or  a  bronze  clock  or 
a  fire-ax  or  something,  after  which  you 
should  leap  madly  upon  his  prostrate  form 
and  dance  on  his  cozy  corner  with  both  feet 
and  cave  in  his  inglenook  for  him.  That  is 
what  you  should  do,  but,  being  a  vacillating 
person — I  am  still  assuming,  you  see,  that 
you  are  constituted  as  I  am — you  weakly 


50     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

surrender  and  accept  the  invitation  and 
promise  to  be  there  promptly  on  time,  and 
he  goes  away  to  snare  more  victims  in  order 
to  have  enough  to  make  a  mess. 

And  so  it  befalls  at  the  appointed  time 
that  you  deck  your  form  in  your  after-six- 
P.  M.  clothes  and  go  up.  On  the  way  you 
get  full  and  fuller  of  dark  forebodings  at 
every  step ;  and  your  worst  expectations  are 
realized  as  soon  as  you  enter  and  are  re 
lieved  of  your  hat  by  a  colored  person  in 
white  gloves,  and  behold  spread  before  you 
a  great  horde  of  those  ladies  and  gentlemen 
whose  rapt  expressions  and  general  air  of 
eager  expectancy  stamp  them  as  true  de 
votees  of  whatever  is  most  classical  in  the 
realm  of  music.  You  realize  that  in  such  a 
company  as  this  you  are  no  better  than  a 
rank  outsider,  and  that  it  behooves  you  to 
attract  as  little  attention  as  possible.  There 
is  nobody  else  here  who  will  be  interested 
in  discussing  with  you  whether  the  Giants 
or  the  Cubs  will  finish  first  next  season;  no 
body  except  you  who  cares  a  whoop  how  In 
diana  will  go  for  president— in  fact,  most  of 
them  probably  haven't  heard  that  Indiana 


"SHE  TRIES  TO  TEAR  ALL  ITS  FRONT  TEETH  OUT 
WITH  HER  BARE  HANDS  " 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     53 

was  thinking  of  going.  Their  souls  are  soar 
ing  among  the  stars  in  a  rarefied  atmosphere 
of  culture,  and  even  if  you  could  you 
wouldn't  dare  venture  up  that  far  with 
yours,  for  fear  of  being  seized  by  an  uncon 
trollable  impulse  to  leap  off  and  end  all,  the 
same  as  some  persons  are  affected  when  on 
the  roof  of  a  tall  building.  So  you  back 
into  the  nearest  corner  and  try  to  look  like 
a  part  of  the  furniture — and  wait  in  dumb 
misery. 

Usually  you  don't  have  to  wait  very  long. 
These  people  are  beggars  for  punishment 
and  like  to  start  early.  It  is  customary  to 
lead  off  the  program  with  a  selection  on  the 
piano  by  a  distinguished  lady  graduate  of 
somebody-with-an-Italian-name's  school  of 
piano  expression.  Under  no  circumstances 
is  it  expected  that  this  lady  will  play  any 
thing  that  you  can  understand  or  that  I 
could  understand.  It  would  be  contrary 
to  the  ethics  of  her  calling  and  deeply  re 
pugnant  to  her  artistic  temperament  to  play 
a  tune  that  would  sound  well  on  a  phono 
graph  record.  This  would  never  do.  She 
comes  forward,  stripped  for  battle,  and 


54     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

bows  and  peels  off  her  gloves  and  fiddles 
with  the  piano-stool  until  she  gets  it  ad 
justed  to  suit  her,  and  then  she  sits  down, 
prepared  to  render  an  immortal  work  com 
posed  by  one  of  the  old  masters  who  was 
intoxicated  at  the  time. 

She  starts  gently.  She  throws  her  head 
far  back  and  closes  her  eyes  dreamily,  and 
hits  the  keys  a  soft,  dainty  little  lick— 
tippy-tap!  Then  leaving  a  call  with  the 
night  clerk  for  eight  o'clock  in  the  morn 
ing,  she  seems  to  drift  off  into  a  peaceful 
slumber,  but  awakens  on  the  moment  and 
hurrying  all  the  way  up  to  the  other  end  of 
Main  Street  she  slams  the  bass  keys  a  couple 
of  hard  blows — bumetty-bum!  And  so  it 
goes  for  quite  a  long  spell  after  that:  Tippy- 
tap! — off  to  the  country  for  a  week-end 
party,  Friday  to  Monday;  bumetty-bum!— 
six  months  elapse  between  the  third  and 
fourth  acts;  tippetty-tip! — two  years  later; 
dear  me,  how  the  old  place  has  changed! 
Biffetty-biff!  Gracious,  how  time  flies,  for 
here  it  is  summer  again  and  the  flowers  are 
all  in  bloom!  You  sink  farther  and  farther 
into  your  chair  and  debate  with  yourself 


Cobb^s  Bill-of-Fare      55 

whether  you  ought  to  run  like  a  coward  or 
stay  and  die  like  a  hero.  One  of  your  legs 
goes  to  sleep  and  the  rest  of  you  envies  the 
leg.  You  can  feel  your  whiskers  growing, 
and  you  begin  to  itch  in  two  hundred  sepa 
rate  places,  but  can't  scratch. 

The  strangest  thing  about  it  is  that  those 
round  you  appear  to  be  enjoying  it.  Incred 
ible  though  it  seems,  they  are  apparently 
finding  pleasure  in  this.  You  can  tell  that 
they  are  enjoying  themselves  because  they 
begin  to  act  as  real  music-lovers  always  act 
under  such  circumstances — some  put  their 
heads  on  one  side  and  wall  up  their  eyes  in 
a  kind  of  dying-calf  attitude  and  listen  so 
hard  you  can  hear  them  listening,  and  some 
bend  over  toward  their  nearest  neighbors 
and  murmur  their  rapture.  It  is  all  right 
for  them  to  murmur,  but  if  you  so  much  as 
scrooge  your  feet,  or  utter  a  low,  despairing 
moan  or  anything,  they  all  turn  and  glare 
at  you  reproachfully  and  go  "Sh!"  like  a 
collection  of  steam-heating  fixtures.  De 
pend  on  them  to  keep  you  in  your  place! 

All  of  a  sudden  the  lady  operator  comes 
out  of  her  trance.  She  comes  out  of  it  with 


56     Cob Fs  Bill-of-Fare 

a  violent  start,  as  though  she  had  just  been 
bee-stung.  She  now  cuts  loose,  regardless 
of  the  piano's  intrinsic  value  and  its  associa 
tions  to  its  owners.  She  skitters  her  flying 
ringers  up  and  down  the  instrument  from 
one  end  to  the  other,  producing  a  sound  like 
hailstones  falling  on  a  tin  roof.  She  grabs 
the  helpless  thing  by  its  upper  lip  and  tries 
to  tear  all  its  front  teeth  out  with  her  bare 
hands.  She  fails  in  this,  and  then  she  goes 
mad  from  disappointment  and  in  a  frenzy 
resorts  to  her  fists. 

As  nearly  as  you  are  able  to  gather,  a  ter 
rific  fire  has  broken  out  in  one  of  the  most 
congested  tenement  districts.  You  can  hear 
the  engines  coming  and  the  hook-and-ladder 
trucks  clattering  over  the  cobbles.  Ambu 
lances  come,  too,  clanging  their  gongs,  and 
one  of  them  runs  over  a  dog;  and  a  wall 
falls,  burying  several  victims  in  the  ruin. 
At  this  juncture  persons  begin  jumping  out 
of  the  top-floor  windows,  holding  cooking 
stoves  in  their  arms,  and  a  team  runs  away 
and  plunges  through  a  plate-glass  window 
into  a  tinware  and  crockery  store.  People 
are  all  running  round  and  shrieking,  and  the 


"  RO-HOCKED  IN  THE  CRA-HADLE  OF  THE  D A-HEEP 
I  LA-HAY  ME  DOWN  IN  PE-HEACE  TO  SA-LEEP!" 


Cobb  'j  Bill-of-Fare     59 

dog  that  was  run  over  is  still  yelping — he 
wasn't  killed  outright  evidently,  but  only 
crippled — and  several  tons  of  dynamite  ex 
plode  in  a  basement. 

As  the  crashing  reverberations  die  away 
the  lady  arises,  wan  but  game,  and  bows  low 
in  response  to  the  applause  and  backs  away, 
leaving  the  wreck  of  the  piano  jammed  back 
on  its  haunches  and  trembling  like  a  leaf  in 
every  limb. 

All  to  yourself,  off  in  your  little  corner, 
you  are  thinking  that  surely  this  has  been 
suffering  and  disaster  enough  for  one  even 
ing  and  everybody  will  be  willing  to  go 
away  and  seek  a  place  of  quiet.  But  no.  In 
its  demand  for  fresh  horrors  this  crowd  is 
as  insatiate  as  the  ancient  Romans  used  to 
be  when  Nero  was  giving  one  of  those  bene 
fits  at  the  Colosseum  for  the  fire  sufferers  of 
his  home  city.  There  now  advances  to  the 
platform  a  somber  person  of  a  bass  aspect, 
he  having  a  double-yolk  face  and  a  three- 
ply  chin  and  a  chest  like  two  or  three  chests. 

You  know  in  advance  what  the  big- 
mouthed  black  bass  is  going  to  sing — there 
is  only  one  regular  song  for  a  bass  singer  to 


60     Cobb's  Ei //-of- Fare 

sing.  From  time  to  time  insidious  efforts 
have  been  made  to  work  in  songs  for  basses 
dealing  with  the  love  affairs  of  Bedouins 
and  the  joys  of  life  down  in  a  coal  mine; 
but  after  all,  to  a  bass  singer  who  really 
values  his  gift  of  song  and  wishes  to  make 
the  most  of  it,  there  is  but  one  suitable  selec 
tion,  beginning  as  follows: 

Ro-hocked  in  the  cra-hadle  of  the  da-heep, 
I  la-hay  me  down  in  pe-heace  to  sa-leep! 
Collum  and  pa-heaceful  be  my  sa-leep 
Ro-hocked  in  the  cra-hadle  of  the  da-heep! 

That  is  the  orthodox  offering  for  a  bass. 
The  basses  of  the  world  have  always  used 
it,  I  believe,  and  generally  to  advantage. 
From  what  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain  I 
judge  that  it  was  first  written  for  use  on  the 
Ark.  Shem  sang  it  probably.  If  there  is 
anything  in  this  doctrine  of  heredity  Ham 
specialized  in  banjo  solos  and  soft-shoe 
dancing,  and  Japhet,  I  take  it,  was  the  tenor 
—he  certainly  had  a  tenor-sounding  kind  of 
a  name.  So  it  must  have  been  Shem,  and 
undoubtedly  he  sang  it  when  the  animals 


"SHEW  UNDOUBTEDLY  SANG  IT 
WHEN  THE  ANIMALS  WERE  HUNGRY" 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare     63 

were  hungry,  so  as  to  drown  out  the  sounds 
of  their  roaring. 

So  this,  his  descendant — this  chip  off  the 
old  cheese,  as  it  were — stands  up  on  the  plat 
form  facing  you,  with  his  chest  well  ex 
tended  to  show  his  red  suspender  straps 
peeping  coyly  out  from  the  arm  openings 
of  his  vest,  and  he  inserts  one  hand  into  his 
bosom,  and  over  and  over  again  he  tells  you 
that  he  now  contemplates  laying  himself 
down  in  peace  to  sleep— which  is  more  than 
anybody  else  on  the  block  will  be  able  to 
do;  and  he  rocks  you  in  the  cradle  of  the 
deep  until  you  are  as  seasick  as  a  cow.  You 
could  stand  that,  maybe,  if  only  he  wouldn't 
make  faces  at  you  while  he  sings.  Some  day 
I  am  going  to  take  the  time  off  to  make  sci 
entific  research  and  ascertain  why  all  bass 
singers  make  faces  when  they  are  singing. 
Surely  there's  some  psychological  reason  for 
this,  and  if  there  isn't  it  should  be  stopped 
by  legislative  enactment. 

When  Sing-Bad  the  Sailor  has  quit  rock 
ing  the  boat  and  gone  ashore,  a  female  sing 
er  generally  obliges  and  comes  off  the  nest 
after  a  merry  lay,  cackling  her  triumph. 


64     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

Then  there  is  something  more  of  a  difficult 
and  painful  nature  on  the  piano;  and  nearly 
always,  too,  there  is  a  large  lady  wearing  a 
low-vamp  gown  on  a  high-arch  form,  who 
in  flute-like  notes  renders  one  of  those 
French  ballads  that's  full  of  la-las  and  is 
supposed  to  be  devilish  and  naughty  because 
nobody  can  understand  it.  For  the  finish, 
some  person  addicted  to  elocution  usually 
recites  a  poem  to  piano  accompaniment. 
The  poem  Robert  of  Sicily  is  much  used  for 
these  purposes,  and  whenever  I  hear  it  Rob 
ert  invariably  has  my  deepest  sympathy  and 
so  has  Sicily.  Toward  midnight  a  cold  col 
lation  is  served,  and  you  recapture  your  hat 
and  escape  forth  into  the  starry  night,  swear 
ing  to  yourself  that  never  again  will  you 
permit  yourself  to  be  lured  into  an  orgy  of 
the  true  believers. 

But  the  next  time  an  invitation  comes 
along  you  will  fall  again.  Anyhow  that's 
what  I  always  do,  meanwhile  raging  in 
wardly  and  cursing  myself  for  a  weak  and 
spineless  creature,  who  doesn't  know  when 
he's  well  off.  Yet  I  would  not  be  regarded 
as  one  who  is  insensible  to  the  charms  of 


CoM's  Bill-of-Fare      65 

music.  In  its  place  I  like  music,  if  it's  the 
kind  of  music  I  like.  These  times,  when  so 
much  of  our  music  is  punched  out  for  us  by 
machinery  like  buttonholes  and  the  air  vents 
in  Swiss  cheese,  and  then  is  put  up  in  cans 
for  the  trade  like  Boston  beans  and  baking- 
powder,  nothing  gives  me  more  pleasure 
than  to  drop  a  nickel  in  the  slot  and  hear  an 
inspiring  selection  by  the  author  of  Alexan 
der's  Ragtime  Band. 

I  am  also  partial  to  band  music.  When 
John  Philip  Sousa  comes  to  town  you  can 
find  me  down  in  the  very  front  row.  I 
appreciate  John  Philip  Sousa  when  he  faces 
me  and  shows  me  that  breast  full  of  medals 
extending  from  the  whiskerline  to  the  belt- 
line,  and  I  appreciate  him  still  more  when 
he  turns  round  and  gives  me  a  look  at  that 
back  of  his.  Since  Colonel  W.  F.  Cody 
practically  retired  and  Miss  Mary  Garden 
went  away  to  Europe,  I  know  of  no  public 
back  which  for  inherent  grace  and  poetry 
of  spinal  motion  can  quite  compare  with 
Mr.  Sousa's. 

I  am  in  my  element  then.  I  do  not  care 
so  very  much  for  Home,  Sweet  Home,  as 


66     Cobb's  Bi //-of- Fare 

rendered  with  so  many  variations  that  it's 
almost  impossible  to  recognize  the  old  place 
any  more ;  but  when  they  switch  to  a  march, 
a  regular  Sousa  march  full  of  um-pahs,  then 
I  begin  to  spread  myself.  A  little  tingle  of 
anticipatory  joy  runs  through  me  as  Mr. 
Sousa  advances  to  the  footlights  and  first 
waves  his  baton  at  the  great  big  German 
who  plays  the  little  shiny  thing  that  looks 
like  a  hypodermic  and  sounds  like  stepping 
on  the  cat,  and  then  turns  the  other  way  and 
waves  it  at  the  little  bit  of  a  German  who 
plays  the  big  thing  that  looks  like  a  venti 
lator  off  an  ocean  liner  and  sounds  like  feed 
ing-time  at  the  zoo.  And  then  he  makes  the 
invitation  general  and  calls  up  the  brasses 
and  the  drums  and  the  woods  and  the  wood 
winds,  and  also  the  thunders  and  the  light 
nings  and  the  cyclones  and  the  earthquakes. 
And  three  or  four  of  the  trombonists  pull 
the  slides  away  out  and  let  go  full  steam 
right  in  my  face,  with  a  blast  that  blows  my 
hair  out  by  the  roots,  and  all  hands  join  in 
and  make  so  much  noise  that  you  can't  hear 
the  music.  And  I  enjoy  it  more  than  words 
can  tell! 


AND  I  ENJOY  IT 
MORE  THAN  WORDS  CAN  TELL!' 


Cob Ps  Bi //-of- Fare     69 

On  the  other  hand,  grand  wopra  does  not 
appeal  to  me.  I  can  enthuse  over  the  robin's 
song  in  the  spring,  and  the  sound  of  the  sum 
mer  wind  rippling  through  the  ripened 
wheat  is  not  without  its  attractions  for  me; 
but  when  I  hear  people  going  into  convul 
sions  of  joy  over  Signer  Massacre's  immor 
tal  opera  of  Medulla  Oblongata  I  feel  that 
I  am  out  of  my  element  and  I  start  back- 
pedaling.  Lucy  D.  Lammermore  may  have 
been  a  lovely  person,  but  to  hear  a  lot  of 
foreigners  singing  about  her  for  three  hours 
on  a  stretch  does  not  appeal  to  me.  I  have 
a  better  use  for  my  little  two  dollars.  For 
that  amount  I  can  go  to  a  good  minstrel 
show  and  sit  in  a  box. 

You  may  recall  when  Strauss'  Elektra  was 
creating  such  a  furor  in  this  country  a 
couple  of  years  ago.  All  the  people  you 
met  were  talking  about  it  whether  they 
knew  anything  about  it  or  not,  as  generally 
they  didn't.  I  caught  the  disease  myself; 
I  went  to  hear  it  sung. 

I  only  lasted  a  little  while — I  confess  it 
unabashedly — if  there  is  such  a  word  as 
unabashedly — and  if  there  isn't  then  I  con- 


70     Cobb's  Bi //-of- Fare 

fess  it  unashamedly.  As  well  as  a  mere  lay 
man  could  gather  from  the  opening  pro 
ceedings,  this  opera  of  Elektra  was  what 
the  life  story  of  the  Bender  family  of  Kan 
sas  would  be  if  set  to  music  by  Fire-Chief 
Croker.  In  the  quieter  moments  of  the  ac 
tion,  when  nobody  was  being  put  out  of  the 
way,  half  of  the  chorus  assembled  on  one 
side  of  the  stage  and  imitated  the  last  rav 
ings  of  John  McCullough,  and  the  other 
half  went  over  on  the  other  side  of  the  stage 
and  clubbed  in  and  imitated  Wallace,  the 
Untamable  Lion,  while  the  orchestra,  to 
show  its  impartiality,  imitated  something 
else — Old  Home  Week  in  a  boiler  factory, 
I  think.  It  moved  me  strangely — strangely 
and  also  rapidly. 

Taking  advantage  of  one  of  these  periods 
of  comparative  calm  I  arose  and  softly  stole 
away.  I  put  a  dummy  in  my  place  to  de 
ceive  the  turnkeys  and  I  found  a  door  provi 
dentially  unlocked  and  I  escaped  out  into 
the  night.  Three  or  four  thousand  automo 
biles  were  charging  up  and  down  Broad 
way,  and  there  was  a  fire  going  on  a  couple 
of  blocks  up  the  street,  and  I  think  a  suf- 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     71 

fragette  procession  was  passing,  too;  but 
after  what  I'd  just  been  through  the  quiet 
was  very  soothing  to  my  eardrums.  I  don't 
know  when  I've  enjoyed  anything  more 
than  the  last  part  of  Elektra,  that  I  didn't 
hear. 

Yet  my  reader  should  not  argue  from  this 
admission  that  I  am  deaf  to  the  charms  of 
the  human  voice  when  raised  in  song.  Un- 
naturalized  aliens  of  a  beefy  aspect  vocaliz 
ing  in  a  strange  tongue  while  an  orchestra 
of  two  hundreds  pieces  performs — that,  I 
admit,  is  not  for  me.  But  just  let  a  pretty 
girl  in  a  white  dress  with  a  flower  in  her 
hair  come  out  on  a  stage,  and  let  her 
have  nice  clear  eyes  and  a  big  wholesome- 
looking  mouth,  and  let  her  open  that  mouth 
and  show  a  double  row  of  white  teeth  that'd 
remind  you  of  the  first  roasting  ear  of  the 
season — just  let  her  be  all  that  and  do  all 
that,  and  then  let  her  look  right  at  me  and 
sing  The  Last  Rose  of  Summer  or  Annie 
Laurie  or  Believe  Me,  If  All  Those  En 
dearing  Young  Charms — and  I  am  hers  to 
command,  world  without  end,  forever  and 
ever,  amen!  My  eyes  cloud  up  for  a  rainy 


12     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

spell,  and  in  my  throat  there  comes  a  lump 
so  big  I  feel  like  a  coach-whip  snake  that 
has  inadvertently  swallowed  a  china  darn 
ing-egg.  And  when  she  is  through  I  am 
the  person  sitting  in  the  second  row  down 
front  who  applauds  until  the  flooring  gives 
way  and  the  plastering  is  jarred  loose  on  the 
next  floor.  She  can  sing  for  me  by  the  hour 
and  I'll  sit  there  by  the  hour  and  listen  to 
her,  and  forget  that  there  ever  was  such  a 
person  in  the  whole  world  as  the  late  Vog- 
ner!  That's  the  kind  of  a  music-lover  I 
am,  and  I  suspect,  if  the  truth  were  known, 
there  are  a  whole  lot  more  just  like  me. 

If  I  may  be  excused  for  getting  sort  of 
personal  and  reminiscent  at  this  point  I 
should  like  to  make  brief  mention  here  of 
the  finest  music  I  ever  heard.  As  it  hap 
pened  this  was  instrumental  music.  I  had 
come  to  New  York  with  a  view  to  revolu 
tionizing  metropolitan  journalism,  and  jour 
nalism  had  shown  a  reluctance  amounting  to 
positive  diffidence  about  coming  forward 
and  being  revolutionized.  Pending  the  time 
when  it  should  see  fit  to  do  so,  I  was  stop 
ping  at  a  boarding  house  on  West  Fifty- 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare     73 

Seventh  Street.  It  has  been  my  observation 
that  practically  everybody  who  comes  to 
New  York  stops  for  a  while  in  a  boarding 
house  on  West  Fifty-Seventh  Street. 

West  Fifty-Seventh  Street  was  where  I 
was  established,  in  a  hall  bedroom  on  the 
top  floor — a.  hall  bedroom  so  form-fitting 
and  cozy  that  when  I  went  to  bed  I  always 
opened  the  transom  to  prevent  a  feeling  of 
closeness  across  the  chest.  If  I  had  as  many 
as  three  callers  in  my  room  of  an  evening 
and  one  of  them  got  up  to  go  first,  the  others 
had  to  sit  quietly  while  he  was  picking  out 
his  own  legs.  But  up  to  the  time  I  speak 
of  I  hadn't  had  any  callers.  I  hadn't  been 
there  very  long  and  I  hadn't  met  any  of  the 
other  boarders  socially,  except  at  the  table. 
I  had  only  what  you  might  call  a  feeding 
acquaintance  with  them. 

Christmas  Eve  came  round.  I  was  a 
thousand  miles  from  home  and  felt  a  mil 
lion.  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  I  was  a 
little  bit  homesick.  Anyhow  it  was  Christ 
mas  Eve,  and  it  was  snowing  outside  accord 
ing  to  the  orthodox  Christmas  Eve  formula, 
and  upward  of  five  million  other  people  in 


74     Cob Ps  Bill-of-Fare 

New  York  were  getting  ready  for  Christ 
mas  without  my  company,  co-operation  or 
assistance.  You'd  be  surprised  to  know  how 
lonesome  you  can  feel  in  the  midst  of  five 
million  people— until  you  try  it  on  a  Christ 
mas  Eve. 

After  dinner  I  went  up  to  my  room  and 
sat  down  with  my  back  against  the  door  and 
my  feet  on  the  window-ledge,  and  I  rested 
one  elbow  in  the  washpitcher  and  put  one 
knee  on  the  mantel  and  tried  to  read  the 
newspapers.  The  first  thing  I  struck  was 
a  Christmas  poem,  a  sentimental  Christmas 
poem,  full  of  allusions  to  the  family  circle, 
and  the  old  homestead,  and  the  stockings 
hanging  by  the  fireplace,  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing. 

That  was  enough.  I  put  on  my  hat  and 
overcoat  and  went  down  into  the  street.  The 
snow  was  coming  down  in  long,  slanting 
lines  and  the  sidewalks  were  all  white,  and 
where  the  lamplight  shone  on  them  they 
looked  like  the  frosting  on  birthday  cakes. 
People  laden  with  bundles  were  diving  in 
and  out  of  all  the  shops.  Every  other  shop 
window  had  a  holly  wreath  hung  in  it,  and 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     75 

when  the  doors  were  opened  those  spicy 
Christmassy  smells  of  green  hemlock  and 
pine  came  gushing  out  in  my  face. 

So  far  as  I  could  tell,  everybody  in  New 
York — except  me — was  buying  something 
for  his  or  her  or  some  other  body's  Christ 
mas.  It  was  a  tolerably  lonesome  sensation. 
I  walked  two  blocks,  loitering  sometimes  in 
front  of  a  store.  Nobody  spoke  to  me  ex 
cept  a  policeman.  He  told  me  to  keep  mov 
ing.  Finally  I  went  into  a  little  family 
liquor  store.  Strangely  enough,  consider 
ing  the  season,  there  was  nobody  there  ex 
cept  the  proprietor.  He  was  reading  a 
German  newspaper  behind  the  bar.  I  con 
ferred  with  him  concerning  the  advisability 
of  an  egg-nog.  He  had  never  heard  of  such 
a  thing  as  an  egg-nog.  I  mentioned  two  old 
friends  of  mine,  named  Tom  and  Jerry, 
respectively,  and  he  didn't  know  them 
either.  So  I  compromised  on  a  hot  lemon 
toddy.  The  lemon  was  one  that  had  grown 
up  with  him  in  the  liquor  business,  I  think, 
and  it  wasn't  what  you  would  call  a  spec 
tacular  success  as  a  hot  toddy;  but  it  was 
warming,  anyhow,  and  that  helped.  I 


76     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

expanded  a  trifle.  I  asked  him  whether  he 
wouldn't  take  something  on  me. 

He  took  a  small  glass  of  beer!  He  was  a 
foreigner  and  he  probably  knew  no  better, 
so  I  suppose  I  shouldn't  have  judged  him 
too  harshly.  But  it  was  Christmas  Eve  and 
snowing  outside — and  he  took  a  small  beer! 

I  paid  him  and  came  away.  I  went  back 
to  my  hall  bedroom  up  on  the  top  floor  and 
sat  down  at  the  window  with  my  face 
against  the  pane,  like  Little  Maggie  in  the 
poem. 

By  now  the  pavements  were  two  inches 
deep  in  whiteness  and  in  the  circle  of  light 
around  an  electric  lamp  up  at  the  corner  of 
Ninth  Avenue  I  could  see,  dimly,  the  thick, 
whirling  white  flakes  chasing  one  another 
abaut  madly,  playing  a  Chrismas  game  of 
their  own.  Across  the  way  foot-passen 
gers  were  still  passing  in  a  straggly  stream. 
I  heard  the  flat  clatter  of  feet  upon  the 
stairs  outside,  heard  someone  wish  some 
body  else  a  Merry  Christmas,  and  heard 
the  other  person  grunt  in  a  non-committal 
sort  of  way.  There  was  the  sound  of  a  hall 
door  slamming  somewhere  on  my  floor. 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare      77 

After  that  there  was  silence — the  kind  of 
silence  that  you  can  break  off  in  chunks  and 
taste. 

It  continued  to  snow.  I  reckon  I  must 
have  sat  there  an  hour  or  more. . 

Down  in  the  street  four  stories  below  I 
heard  something — music.  I  raised  the  sash 
and  looked  out.  An  Italian  had  halted  in 
front  of  the  boarding  house  with  a  grind 
organ  and  he  was  turning  the  crank  and  the 
thing  was  playing.  It  wasn't  much  of  a 
grind  organ  as  grind  organs  go.  I  judge  it 
must  have  been  the  original  grind  organ 
that  played  with  Booth  and  Barrett.  It  had 
lost  a  lot  of  its  most  important  works,  and  it 
had  the  asthma  and  the  heaves  and  one 
thing  and  another  the  matter  with  it. 

But  the  tune  it  was  playing  was  My  Old 
Kentucky  Home — and  Kentucky  was  where 
I'd  come  from.  The  Italian  played  it 
through  twice,  once  on  his  own  hook  and 
once  because  I  went  downstairs  and  divided 
my  money  with  him. 

I  regard  that  as  the  finest  music  I  ever 
heard. 

As  I  was  saying  before,  the  classical  stuff 


78     Cob Ps  Bill-of-Fare 

may  do  for  those  who  like  it  well  enough  to 
stand  it,  but  the  domestic  article  suits  me. 
I  like  the  kind  of  beer  that  this  man  Bach 
turned  out  in  the  spring  of  the  year,  but  I 
don't  seem  to  be  able  to  care  much  for  his 
music.  And  so  far  as  Chopin  is  concerned, 
I  hope  you'll  all  do  your  Christmas  Chopin 
early. 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 


A  RT 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 


Art 

IN  ART  as  in  music  I  am  one  who  is  very 
easily  satisfied.     All  I  ask  of  a  picture  is 
that  it  shall  look  like  something,  and  all 
I  expect  of  music  is  that  it  shall  sound  like 
something. 

In  this  attitude  I  feel  confident  that  I  am 
one  of  a  group  of  about  seventy  million 
people  in  this  country,  more  or  less,  but  only 
a  few  of  us,  a  very  heroic  few  of  us,  have  the 
nerve  to  come  right  out  and  take  a  firm  posi 
tion  and  publicly  express  our  true  senti 
ments  on  these  important  subjects.  Some 
are  under  the  dominion  of  strong-minded 
wives.  Some  hesitate  to  reveal  their  true 
artistic  leanings  for  fear  of  being  called 
low-browed  vulgarians.  Some  are  plastic 
posers  and  so  pretend  to  be  something  they 
are  not  to  win  the  approval  of  the  ultra- 
intellectuals.  There  are  only  a  handful  of 


82     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

us  who  are  ready  and  willing  to  go  on  rec 
ord  as  saying  where  we  stand. 

It  is  because  of  this  cowardice  on  the  part 
of  the  great  silent  majority  that  every  year 
sees  us  backed  farther  and  farther  into  a 
corner.  We  walk  through  miles  and  miles 
of  galleries,  or  else  we  are  led  through  them 
by  our  wives  and  our  friends,  and  we  look 
in  vain  for  the  kind  of  pictures  that  mother 
used  to  make  and  father  used  to  buy.  What 
do  we  find?  Once  in  a  while  we  behold  a 
picture  of  something  that  we  can  recognize 
without  a  chart,  and  it  looms  before  our 
gladdened  vision  like  a  rock-and-rye  in  a 
weary  land.  But  that  is  not  apt  to  happen 
often — not  in  a  I9i2-model  gallery.  In 
such  an  establishment  one  is  likely  to  meet 
only  Old  Masters  and  Young  Messers.  If 
it's  an  Old  Master  we  probably  behold  a 
Flemish  saint  or  a  German  saint  or  an  Ital 
ian  saint — depending  on  whether  the  artist 
was  Flemish  or  German  or  Italian — de 
picted  as  being  shot  full  of  arrows  and  en 
joying  same  to  the  uttermost.  If  it  is  a 
Young  Messer  the  canvas  probably  presents 
to  us  a  view  of  a  poached  egg  apparently 


"WE  LOOKED  IN  VAIN  FOR  THE  KIND  OF  PICTURES 

THAT  MOTHER  USED  TO  MAKE  AND  FATHER  USED  TO  BUY ' 


Cob Ps  Bill-of-Fare     85 

bursting  into  a  Welsh  rarebit.  At  least  that 
is  what  it  looks  like  to  us — a  golden  buck, 
forty  cents  at  any  good  restaurant — in  the 
act  of  undergoing  spontaneous  combustion. 
But  we  are  informed  that  this  is  an  impres 
sionistic  interpretation  of  a  sunset  at  sea,  and 
we  are  expected  to  stand  before  it  and  carry 
on  regardless. 

But  I  for  one  must  positively  decline  to 
carry  on.  This  sort  of  thing  does  not  appeal 
to  me.  I  don't  want  to  have  to  consult  the 
official  catalogue  in  order  to  ascertain  for 
sure  whether  this  year's  prize  picture  is  a 
quick  lunch  or  an  Italian  gloaming.  I'm 
very  peculiar  that  way.  I  like  to  be  able  to 
tell  what  a  picture  aims  to  represent  just  by 
looking  at  it.  I  presume  this  is  the  result  of 
my  early  training.  I  date  back  to  the 
Rutherford  B.  Hayes  School  of  Interior 
Decorating.  In  a  considerable  degree  I  am 
still  wedded  to  my  early  ideals.  I  distinctly 
recall  the  time  when  upon  the  walls  of  every 
wealthy  home  of  America  there  hung, 
among  other  things,  two  staple  oil  paintings 
— a  still-life  for  the  dining  room,  showing  a 
dead  fish  on  a  plate,  and  a  pastoral  for  the 


86     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

parlor,  showing  a  collection  of  cows  drink 
ing  out  of  a  purling  brook.  A  dead  fish  with 
a  glazed  eye  and  a  cold  clammy  fin  was  not 
a  thing  you  would  care  to  have  around  the 
house  for  any  considerable  period  of  time, 
except  in  a  picture,  and  the  same  was  true  of 
cows.  People  who  could  not  abide  the  idea 
of  a  cow  in  the  kitchen  gladly  welcomed 
one  into  the  parlor  when  painted  in  connec 
tion  with  the  above  purling  brook  and  sev 
eral  shade  trees. 

Those  who  could  not  afford  oil  paintings 
went  in  for  steel  engravings  and  chromos— 
good  reliable  brands,  such  as  the  steel  en 
graving  of  Henry  Clay's  Farewell  to  the 
American  Senate  and  the  Teaching  Baby  to 
Waltz  art  chromo.  War  pictures  were  also 
very  popular  back  in  that  period.  If  it 
were  a  Northern  household  you  could  be 
pretty  sure  of  seeing  a  work  entitled  Gettys 
burg,  showing  three  Union  soldiers,  two 
plain  and  one  colored,  in  the  act  of  repuls 
ing  Pickett's  charge.  If  it  were  a  Southern 
household  there  would  be  one  that  had  been 
sold  on  subscription  by  a  strictly  non-parti 
san  publishing  house  in  Charleston,  South 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     87 

Carolina,  and  guaranteed  to  be  historically 
correct  in  all  particulars,  representing  Rob 
ert  E.  Lee  chasing  U.  S.  Grant  up  a  pal 
metto  tree,  while  in  the  background  were  a 
large  number  of  deceased  Northern  invad 
ers  neatly  racked  up  like  cordwood. 

Such  things  as  these  were  a  part  of  the 
art  education  of  our  early  youth.  Along 
with  them  we  learned  to  value  the  family 
photograph  album,  which  fastened  with  a 
latch  like  a  henhouse  door,  and  had  a  nap 
on  it  like  a  furred  tongue,  and  contained, 
among  other  treasures,  the  photograph  of 
our  Uncle  Hiram  wearing  his  annual  collar. 

And  there  were  also  enlarged  crayon  por 
traits  in  heavy  gold  frames  with  red  plush 
insertions,  the  agent  having  thrown  in  the 
portraits  in  consideration  of  our  taking  the 
frames;  and  souvenirs  of  the  Philadelphia 
Centennial ;  and  wrooden  scoop  shovels  heav 
ily  gilded  by  hand  with  moss  roses  painted 
on  the  scoop  part  and  blue  ribbon  bows  to 
hang  them  up  by;  and  on  the  what-not  in 
the  corner  you  were  reasonably  certain  of 
finding  a  conch  shell  with  the  Lord's  Prayer 
engraved  on  it;  and  if  you  held  the  shell  up 


88     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

to  your  young  ear  you  could  hear  the  mur 
mur  of  the  sea  just  as  plain  as  anything.  Of 
course  you  could  secure  the  same  murmur 
ing  effect  by  holding  an  old-fashioned  tin 
cuspidor  up  to  your  ear,  too,  but  in  this  case 
the  poetic  effect  would  have  been  lacking. 
And,  besides,  there  were  other  uses  for  the 
cuspidor. 

Almost  the  only  Old  Masters  with  whose 
works  we  were  well  acquainted  were  John 
L.  Sullivan  and  Nonpareil  Jack  Dempsey. 
But  Rosa  Bonheur's  Horse  Fair  suited  us 
clear  down  to  the  ground — her  horses 
looked  like  real  horses,  even  if  they  were  the 
kind  that  haul  brewery  wagons;  and  in  the 
matter  of  sculpture  Powers'  Greek  Slave 
seemed  to  fill  the  bill  to  the  satisfaction  of 
all.  Anthony  Comstock  and  the  Boston 
Purity  League  had  not  taken  charge  of  our 
art  as  yet,  and  nobody  seemed  to  find  any 
fault  because  the  Greek  lady  looked  as 
though  she'd  slipped  on  the  top  step  and 
come  down  just  as  she  was,  wearing  nothing 
to  speak  of  except  a  pair  of  handcuffs.  No 
body  did  speak  of  it  either— not  in  a  mixed 
company  anyhow. 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare     89 

Furniture  was  preferred  when  it  was  new 
—the  newer  the  better.  We  went  in  for 
golden  oak  and  for  bird's  eye  maple,  de 
pending  on  whether  we  liked  our  furniture 
to  look  tanned  or  freckled;  and  when  the 
careful  housekeeper  threw  open  her  parlor 
for  a  social  occasion,  such  as  a  funeral,  the 
furniture  gave  off  a  splendid  new  sticky 
smell,  similar  to  a  paint  and  varnish 
store  on  a  hot  day.  The  vogue  for  antiques 
hadn't  got  started  yet;  that  was  to  de 
scend  upon  us  later  on.  We  rather  liked 
the  dining-room  table  to  have  all  its  legs 
still,  and  the  bureau  to  have  drawers  that 
could  be  opened  without  blasting.  In 
short,  that  was  the  period  of  our  national 
life  when  only  the  very  poor  had  to  put  up 
wTith  decrepit  second-hand  furniture,  as  op 
posed  to  these  times  when  only  the  very  rich 
can  afford  to  own  it.  If  you  have  any  doubts 
regarding  this  last  assertion  of  mine  I 
should  advise  you  to  drop  into  any  reliable 
antique  shop  and  inquire  the  price  of  a  ma 
hogany  sideboard  suffering  from  tetter  and 
other  skin  diseases,  or  a  black  walnut  cup 
board  with  doors  that  froze  up  solid  about 


90     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

the  time  of  the  last  Seminole  War.  I  sup 
pose  these  things  go  in  cycles — in  fact,  I'm 
sure  they  do.  Some  day  the  bare  sight  of 
the  kind  of  furniture  which  most  people 
favor  nowadays  will  cause  a  person  of  artis 
tic  sensibilities  to  burst  into  tears,  just  as  the 
memory  of  the  things  that  everybody  liked 
twenty-five  or  thirty  years  ago  gives  such 
poignant  pain  to  so  many  at  present. 

Even  up  to  the  time  of  the  World's  Fair 
quite  a  lot  of  people  still  favored  the  sim 
pler  and  more  understandable  forms  of  art 
expression.  We  went  to  Chicago  and  reli 
giously  visited  the  Art  Building,  and  in  our 
nice  new  creaky  shoes  we  walked  past  miles 
and  miles  of  brought-on  paintings  by  for 
eign  artists,  whose  names  we  could  not  pro 
nounce,  in  order  to  find  some  sentimental 
domestic  subject.  After  we  had  found  it 
we  would  stand  in  front  of  it  for  hours  on  a 
stretch  with  the  tears  rolling  down  our 
cheeks.  Some  of  us  wept  because  the  spirit 
of  the  picture  moved  us,  and  some  because 
our  poor  tired  feet  hurt  us  and  the  picture 
gave  us  a  good  excuse  for  crying  in  public, 
and  so  we  did  so — freely  and  openly. 


Cobb's  Bi  //-of-  Fare 


Grant  if  you  will  that  our  taste  was  crude 
and  raw  and  provincial,  yet  we  knew  what 
we  liked  and  the  bulk  of  us  weren't  ashamed 
to  say  so,  either.  What  we  liked  was  a  pic 
ture  or  a  statue  which  remotely  at  least  re 
sembled  the  thing  that  it  was  presumed  to 
represent.  Likewise  we  preferred  pictures 
of  things  that  we  ourselves  knew  about  and 
could  understand. 

Maybe  it  was  because  of  that  early  train 
ing  that  a  good  many  of  us  have  never  yet 
been  able  to  work  up  much  enthusiasm  over 
the  Old  Masters.  Mind  you,  we  have  no 
quarrel  with  those  who  become  incoherent 
and  babbling  with  joy  in  the  presence  of 
an  Old  Master,  but  —  doggone  'em!  —  they 
insist  on  quarreling  with  us  because  we 
think  differently.  We  fail  to  see  anything 
ravishingly  beautiful  in  a  faded,  blistered, 
cracked,  crumbling  painting  of  an  early 
Christian  martyr  on  a  grill,  happily  frying 
on  one  side  like  an  egg  —  a  picture  that  looks 
as  though  the  Old  Master  painted  it  some 
morning  before  breakfast,  when  he  wasn't 
feeling  the  best  in  the  world,  and  then  wore 
it  as  a  liver  pad  for  forty  or  fifty  years.  We 


92     Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

cannot  understand  why  they  love  the  Old 
Masters  so,  and  they  cannot  understand  why 
we  prefer  the  picture  of  Custer's  Last  Stand 
that  the  harvesting  company  used  to  give 
away  to  advertise  its  mowing  machines. 

Once  you  get  away  from  the  early  settlers 
among  the  Old  Masters  the  situation  be 
comes  different.  Rembrandt  and  Hals 
painted  some  portraits  that  appeal  deeply 
to  the  imagination  of  nearly  all  of  my  set. 
The  portraits  which  they  painted  not  only 
looked  like  regular  persons,  but  so  far  as  my 
limited  powers  of  observation  go,  they  were 
among  the  few  painters  of  Dutch  subjects 
who  didn't  always  paint  a  windmill  or  two 
into  the  background.  It  probably  took 
great  resolution  and  self-restraint,  but  they 
did  it  and  I  respect  them  for  it. 

I  may  say  that  I  am  also  drawn  to  the 
kind  of  ladies  that  Gainsborough  and  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  painted.  They  certainly 
turned  out  some  mighty  good-looking  ladies 
in  those  days,  and  they  were  tasty  dressers, 
too,  and  I  enjoy  looking  at  their  pictures. 
Coming  down  the  line  a  little  farther,  I 
want  to  state  that  there  is  also  something 


THE  INSCRUTABLE  SMILE  OF  A  SALESLADY 
WOULD  MAKE  MON A  LISA  SEEM  A  MERE  AMATEUR : 


Cob  Ps  Bill-of-Fare      95 

very  fascinating  in  those  soft-boiled  pink 
ladies,  sixteen  hands  high,  with  sorrel 
manes,  that  Bouguereau  did;  and  the  soldier 
pictures  of  Meissonier  and  Detaille  appeal 
to  me  mightily.  Their  soldiers  are  always 
such  nice  neat  soldiers,  and  they  never 
have  their  uniforms  mussed  up  or  their 
accouterments  disarranged,  even  when  they 
are  being  shot  up  or  cut  down  or  something. 
Corot  and  Rousseau  did  some  landscapes 
that  seem  to  approximate  the  real  thing,  and 
there  are  several  others  whose  names  escape 
me;  but,  speaking  for  myself  alone,  I  wish 
to  say  that  this  is  about  as  far  as  I  can  go  at 
this  writing.  I  must  admit  that  I  have 
never  been  held  spellbound  and  enthralled 
for  hours  on  a  stretch  by  a  contemplation  of 
the  inscrutable  smile  on  Mona  Lisa.  To 
me  she  seems  merely  a  lady  smiling  about 
something — simply  that  and  nothing  more. 
Any  woman  can  smile  inscrutably;  that  is 
one  of  the  specialties  of  the  sex.  The  in 
scrutable  smile  of  a  saleslady  in  an  exclusive 
Fifth  Avenue  shop  when  a  customer  asks  to 
look  at  something  a  little  cheaper  would 
make  Mona  Lisa  seem  a  mere  amateur  as 


96     Cobb^s  Bill-of-Fare 

an  inscrutable  smiler.  Quite  a  number  of 
us  remained  perfectly  calm  when  some  gen 
tlemen  stole  Miss  Lisa  out  of  the  Louvre, 
and  we  expect  to  remain  equally  calm  if  she 
is  never  restored. 

As  I  said  before,  our  little  band  is  shrink 
ing  in  numbers  day  by  day.  The  popula 
tion  as  a  whole  are  being  educated  up  to 
higher  ideals  in  art.  On  the  wings  of  sym 
bolism  and  idealism  they  are  soaring  ever 
higher  and  higher,  until  a  whole  lot  of  them 
must  be  getting  dizzy  in  the  head  by  now. 

First,  there  was  the  impressionistic 
school,  which  started  it;  and  then  there  was 
the  post-impressionistic  school,  suffering 
from  the  same  disease  but  in  a  more  violent 
form;  and  here  just  recently  there  have 
come  along  the  Cubists  and  the  Futurists. 

You  know  about  the  Cubists?  A  Cubist 
is  a  person  who  for  reasons  best  known  to 
the  police  has  not  been  locked  up  yet,  who 
asserts  that  all  things  in  Nature,  living  and 
inanimate,  properly  resolve  themselves  into 
cubes.  What  is  more,  he  goes  and  paints 
pictures  to  prove  it — pictures  of  cubic 
waterfalls  pouring  down  cubic  precipices, 


"A  PERSON  WHO  FOR  REASONS  BEST  KNOWN 
TO  THE  POLICE  HAS  NOT  BEEN  LOCKED  UP" 


Cobb's  Bi //-of- Fare     99 

and  cubic  ships  sailing  on  cubic  oceans,  and 
cubic  cows  being  milked  by  cubic  milk 
maids.  He  makes  portraits,  too — portraits 
of  persons  with  cubic  hands  and  cubic  feet, 
who  are  smoking  cubeb  cigarettes  and  have 
solid  cubiform  heads.  On  that  last  propo 
sition  we  are  with  them  unanimously;  we 
will  concede  that  there  are  people  in  this 
world  with  cube-shaped  heads,  they  being 
the  people  who  profess  to  enjoy  this  style 
of  picture. 

A  Futurist  begins  right  where  a  Cubist 
leaves  off,  and  gets  worse.  The  'Futurists 
have  already  had  exhibitions  in  Paris  and 
London  and  last  Spring  they  invaded  New 
York.  They  call  themselves  art  anarchists. 
Their  doctrine  is  a  simple  and  a  cheerful 
one — they  merely  preach  that  whatever  is 
normal  is  wrong.  They  not  only  preach  it, 
they  practice  it. 

Here  are  some  of  their  teachings: 

"We  teach  the  plunge  into  shadowy  death 
under  the  white  set  eyes  of  the  ideal! 

"The  mind  must  launch  the  flaming 
body,  like  a  fire-ship,  against  the  enemy,  the 


100  Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

eternal  enemy  that,  if  he  do  not  exist,  must 
be  invented! 

"The  victory  is  ours — I  am  sure  of  it,  for 
the  maniacs  are  already  hurling  their  hearts 
to  heaven  like  bombs!  Attention!  Fire! 
Our  blood?  Yes!  All  our  blood  in  tor 
rents  to  redye  the  sickly  auroras  of  the 
earth!  Yes,  and  we  shall  also  be  able  to 
warm  thee  within  our  smoking  arms,  O 
wretched,  decrepit,  chilly  Sun,  shivering 
upon  the  summit  of  the  Gorisankor!" 

There  you  have  the  whole  thing,  you  see, 
simply,  dispassionately  and  quietly  pre 
sented.  Most  of  us  have  seen  newspaper 
reproductions  of  the  best  examples  of  the 
Futurists'  school.  As  well  as  a  body  can 
judge  from  these  reproductions,  a  Futurist's 
method  of  execution  must  be  comparatively 
simple.  After  looking  at  his  picture,  you 
would  say  that  he  first  put  on  a  woolly  over 
coat  and  a  pair  of  overshoes;  that  he  then 
poured  a  mixture  of  hearth  paint,  tomato 
catsup,  liquid  bluing,  burnt  cork,  English 
mustard,  Easter  dyes  and  the  yolks  of  a 
dozen  eggs  over  himself,  seasoning  to  taste 
with  red  peppers.  Then  he  spread  a  large 


CoWs  Bill-of-Fare  101 

tarpaulin  on  the  floor  and  lay  down  on  it 
and  had  an  epileptic  fit,  the  result  being  a 
picture  which  he  labeled  Revolt,  or  Colli 
sion  Between  Two  Heavenly  Bodies,  or 
Premature  Explosion  of  a  Custard  Pie,  or 
something  else  equally  appropriate.  The 
Futurists  ought  to  make  quite  a  number  of 
converts  in  this  country,  especially  among 
those  advanced  lovers  of  art  who  are  begin 
ning  to  realize  that  the  old  impressionistic 
school  lacked  emphasis  and  individuality  in 
its  work.  But  I  expect  to  stand  firm,  and 
when  everybody  else  nearly  is  a  Futurist 
and  is  tearing  down  Sargent's  pictures  and 
Abbey's  and  Whistler's  to  make  room  for 
immortal  Young  Messers,  I  and  a  few 
others  will  still  be  holding  out  resolutely 
to  the  end. 

At  such  times  as  these  I  fain  would  send 
my  thoughts  back  longingly  to  an  artist  who 
flourished  in  the  town  where  I  was  born  and 
brought  up.  He  was  practically  the  only 
artist  we  had,  but  he  was  versatile  in  the  ex 
treme.  He  was  several  kinds  of  a  painter 
rolled  into  one — house,  sign,  portrait,  land 
scape,  marine  and  wagon.  In  his  lighter 


102  Cobb's  Bi //-of- Fare 

hours,  when  building  operations  were  dull, 
he  specialized  in  oil  paintings  of  life  and 
motion — mainly  pictures  of  horse  races  and 
steamboat  races.  When  he  painted  a  horse 
race,  the  horses  were  always  shown  running 
neck  and  neck  with  their  mouths  wide  open 
and  their  eyes  gleaming;  and  their  nostrils 
were  widely  extended  and  painted  a  deep 
crimson,  and  their  legs  were  neatly  arranged 
just  so,  and  not  scrambled  together  in  any 
old  fashion,  as  seems  to  be  the  case  with  the 
legs  of  the  horses  that  are  being  painted 
nowadays.  And  when  he  painted  a  steam 
boat  race  it  would  always  be  the  Natchez 
and  the  Robert  E.  Lee  coming  down  the 
river  abreast  in  the  middle  of  the  night, 
with  the  darkies  dancing  on  the  lower  decks 
and  heavy  black  smoke  rolling  out  of  the 
smokestacks  in  four  distinct  columns — one 
column  to  each  smokestack — and  showers  of 
sparks  belching  up  into  the  vault  of  night. 
There  was  action  for  you — action  and  at 
tention  to  detail.  With  this  man's  paintings 
you  could  tell  a  horse  from  a  steamboat  at 
a  glance.  He  was  nothing  of  an  impres 
sionist;  he  never  put  smokestacks  on  the 


"COLLISION  BETWEEN  TWO  HEAVENLY  BODIES 
OR  PREMATURE  EXPLOSION  OF  A  CUSTARD  PIE" 


Bill-of-Fare  105 


horse  nor  legs  on  the  steamboat.  And  his 
work  gave  general  satisfaction  throughout 
that  community. 

Frederic  Remington  wasn't  any  impres 
sionist  either;  and  so  far  as  I  can  learn  he 
didn't  have  a  cubiform  idea  in  stock.  When 
Remington  painted  an  Indian  on  a  pony  it 
was  a  regular  Indian  and  a  regular  pony  — 
not  one  of  those  cotton-batting  things  with 
fat  legs  that  an  impressionist  slaps  on  to  a 
canvas  and  labels  a  horse.  You  could  smell 
the  lathered  sweat  on  the  pony's  hide  and 
feel  the  dust  of  the  dry  prairie  tickling  your 
nostrils.  You  could  see  the  slide  of  the 
horse's  withers  and  watch  the  play  of  the 
naked  Indian's  arm  muscles.  I  should  like 
to  enroll  as  a  charter  member  of  a  league  of 
Americans  who  believe  that  Frederic  Rem 
ington  and  Howard  Pyle  were  greater 
painters  than  any  Old  Master  that  ever 
turned  out  blistered  saints  and  fly-blown 
cherubim.  And  if  every  one  who  secretly 
thinks  the  same  way  about  it  would  only 
join  in  —  of  course  they  wouldn't,  but  if  they 
would  —  we'd  be  strong  enough  to  elect  a 
president  on  a  platform  calling  for  a  pro- 


106  Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

hibitive  tariff  against  the  foreign-pauper- 
labor  Old  Masters  of  Europe. 

While  we  were  about  it  our  league  could 
probably  do  something  in  the  interests  of 
sculpture.  It  is  apparent  to  any  fair-minded 
person  that  sculpture  has  been  very  much 
overdone  in  this  country.  It  seems  to  us 
there  should  be  a  law  against  perpetuating 
any  of  our  great  men  in  marble  or  bronze  or 
stone  or  amalgam  fillings  until  after  he  has 
been  dead  a  couple  of  hundred  years,  and 
by  that  time  a  fresh  crop  ought  to  be  coming 
on  and  probably  we  shall  have  lost  the  de 
sire  to  create  such  statues. 

A  great  man  who  cannot  live  in  the  affec 
tionate  and  grateful  memories  of  his  fellow 
countrymen  isn't  liable  to  live  if  you  put  up 
statues  of  him;  that,  however,  is  not  the 
main  point. 

The  artistic  aspect  is  the  thing  to  consider. 
So  few  of  our  great  men  have  been  really 
pretty  to  look  at.  Andrew  Jackson  made  a 
considerable  dent  in  the  history  of  his  per 
iod,  but  when  it  comes  to  beauty,  there  isn't 
a  floor-walker  in  a  department  store  any 
where  that  hasn't  got  him  backed  clear  off 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare  101 

the  pedestal.  In  addition  to  that,  the  sort 
of  clothes  we've  been  wearing  for  the  last 
century  or  so  do  not  show  up  especially  well 
in  marble.  Putting  classical  draperies  on 
our  departed  solons  has  been  tried,  but  carv 
ing  a  statesman  with  only  a  towel  draped 
over  him,  like  a  Roman  senator  coming  out 
of  a  Turkish  bath,  is  a  departure  from  the 
real  facts  and  must  be  embarrassing  to  his 
shade.  The  greatest  celebrities  were  ever 
the  most  modest  of  men.  I'll  bet  the  spirit 
of  the  Father  of  His  Country  blushes  every 
time  he  flits  over  that  statue  of  himself 
alongside  the  Capitol  at  Washington — the 
one  showing  him  sitting  in  a  bath  cabinet 
with  nothing  on  but  a  sheet. 

Sticking  to  the  actual  conditions  doesn't 
seem  to  help  much  either.  Future  genera 
tions  will  come  and  stand  in  front  of  the 
statue  of  a  leader  of  thought  who*  flourished 
back  about  1840,  say,  and  wonder  how  any 
body  ever  had  feet  like  those  and  lived. 
Horace  Greeley's  chin  whiskers  no  doubt 
looked  all  right  on  Horace  when  he  was 
alive,  but  when  done  in  bronze  they  invar 
iably  present  a  droopy  not  to  say  dropsical 


108  CobFs  Bill-of-Fare 

appearance;  and  the  kind  of  bone-handled 
umbrella  that  Daniel  Webster  habitually 
carried  has  never  yet  been  successfully 
worked  out  in  marble.  When  you  contem 
plate  the  average  statue  of  Lincoln — and 
most  of  them,  as  you  may  have  noticed,  are 
very  average — you  do  not  see  there  the 
majesty  and  the  grandeur  and  the  abiding 
sorrow  of  the  man  and  the  tragedy  of  his 
life.  At  least  I  know  I  do  not  see  those 
things.  I  see  a  pair  of  massive  square-toed 
boots,  such  as  I'm  sure  Father  Abe  never 
wore — he  couldn't  have  worn  'em  and 
walked  a  step — and  I  see  a  beegum  hat 
weighing  a  ton  and  a  half,  and  I  say  to  my 
self  :  "This  is  not  the  Abraham  Lincoln  who 
freed  the  slaves  and  penned  the  Gettysburg 
address.  No,  sir!  A  man  with  those  legs 
would  never  have  been  president — he'd 
have  been  in  a  dime  museum  exhibiting  his 
legs  for  ten  cents  a  look — and  they'd  have 
been  worth  the  money  too." 

Nobody  seems  to  have  noticed  it,  but  we 
undoubtedly  had  the  cube  form  of  expres 
sion  in  our  native  sculpture  long  before  it 
came  out  in  painting. 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare  109 

To  get  a  better  idea  of  what  I'm  trying 
to  drive  at,  just  take  a  trip  up  through  Cen 
tral  Park  the  next  time  you  are  in  New 
York  and  pause  a  while  before  those  bronzes 
of  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  Robert  Burns 
which  stand  on  the  Mall.  They  are  called 
bronzes,  but  to  me  they  always  looked  more 
like  castings.  I  don't  care  if  you  are  as 
Scotch  as  a  haggis,  I  know  in  advance  what 
your  feelings  will  be.  If  you  decide  that 
these  two  men  ever  looked  in  life  like  those 
two  bronzes  you  are  going  to  lose  some  of 
your  love  and  veneration  for  them  right 
there  on  the  spot;  or  else  you  are  going  to 
be  filled  with  an  intense  hate  for  the  persons 
who  have  libeled  them  thus,  after  they  were 
dead  and  gone  and  not  in  position  to  pro 
tect  themselves  legally.  But  you  don't  nec 
essarily  have  to  come  to  New  York — 
you've  probably  got  some  decoration  in  your 
home  town  that  is  equally  sad.  There've 
been  a  lot  of  good  stone-masons  spoiled  in 
this  country  to  make  enough  sculptors  to  go 
round. 

But  while  we  are  thinking  these  things 
about  art  and  not  daring  to  express  them,  I 


110  Cob Ps  Bill-of-Fare 

take  note  that  new  schools  may  come  and 
new  schools  may  go,  but  there  is  one  class 
of  pictures  that  always  gets  the  money  and 
continues  to  give  general  satisfaction  among 
the  masses. 

I  refer  to  the  moving  pictures. 


Cob b's  Bill-of-Fare 


SPORT 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

Sport 

A  I  UNDERSTAND  it,  sport  is  hard 
work  for  which  you  do  not  get  paid. 
If,  for  hire,  you  should  consent  to  go 
forth  and  spend  eight  hours  a  day  slamming 
a  large  and  heavy  hammer  at  a  mark,  that 
would  be  manual  toil,  and  you  would  be 
long  to  the  union  and  carry  a  card,  and  have 
political  speeches  made  to  you  by  persons 
out  for  the  labor  vote.  But  if  you  do  this 
without  pay,  and  keep  it  up  for  more  than 
eight  hours  on  a  stretch,  it  then  becomes 
sport  of  a  very  high  order — and  if  you  con 
tinue  it  for  a  considerable  period  of  time,  at 
more  or  less  expense  to  yourself,  you  are 
eventually  given  a  neat  German-silver 
badge,  costing  about  two  dollars,  which  you 
treasure  devotedly  ever  after.  A  man  who 
walks  twenty-five  miles  a  day  for  a  month 
without  getting  anything  for  it — except  two 


114  Cob Ps  Bill-of-Fare 

lines  on  the  sporting  page — is  a  devotee  of 
pedestrianism,  and  thereby  acquires  great 
merit  among  his  fellow  athletes.  A  man 
who  walks  twenty-five  miles  a  day  for  a 
month  and  gets  paid  for  it  is  a  letter-carrier. 

Also  sport  is  largely  a  point  of  view.  A 
skinny  youth  who  flits  forth  from  a  gymna 
sium  attired  in  the  scenario  of  a  union  suit, 
with  a  design  of  a  winged  Welsh  rarebit  on 
his  chest,  and  runs  many  miles  at  top  speed 
through  the  crowded  marts  of  trade,  is  high 
ly  spoken  of  and  has  medals  hung  on  him. 
If  he  flits  forth  from  a  hospital  somewhat 
similarly  attired,  and  does  the  same  thing, 
the  case  is  diagnosed  as  temporary  insanity 
• — and  we  drape  a  strait-jacket  on  him  and 
send  for  his  folks.  Such  is  the  narrow  mar 
gin  that  divides  Marathon  and  mania;  and 
it  helps  to  prove  that  sport  is  mainly  a  state 
of  mind. 

I  am  speaking  now  with  reference  to  our 
own  country.  Different  nations  have  dif 
ferent  conceptions  of  this  subject.  Golf  and 
eating  haggis  in  a  state  of  original  sin  are 
the  national  pastimes  of  the  Scotch,  a  hardy 
race.  At  submarine  boating  and  military 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare  115 

ballooning  the  French  acknowledge  no 
superiors.  Their  balloons  go  up  and  never 
come  down,  and  their  submarines  go  down 
and  never  come  up.  The  Irish  are  born  club 
swingers,  as  witness  any  police  force;  and 
the  Swiss,  as  is  well  known,  have  no  equals 
at  Alpine  mountain  climbing,  chasing 
cuckoos  into  wooden  clocks,  and  running 
hotels.  I've  always  believed  that,  if  the 
truth  were  only  known,  the  reason  why  the 
Swiss  Family  Robinson  did  so  well  in  that 
desert  clime  was  because  they  opened  a 
hotel  and  took  in  the  natives  to  board. 

Among  certain  branches  of  the  Teutonic 
races  the  favorite  indoor  sport  is  suicide  by 
gas,  and  the  favorite  outdoor  sport  is  going 
to  a  schutzenfest  and  singing  Ach  du  lieber 
Augustin!  coming  home.  To  Italy  the  rest 
of  us  are  indebted  for  unparalleled  skill  in 
eating  spaghetti  with  one  tool — they  use  the 
putting  iron  all  the  way  round.  Our  cousins, 
the  English,  excel  at  archery,  tea-drinking 
and  putting  the  fifty-six  pound  protest. 
Thus  we  lead  the  world  at  contesting  Olym 
pian  games  and  winning  them,  and  they  lead 
the  world  at  losing  them  first  and  then  con- 


116  CobPs  Bill-of-Fare 

testing  them.  In  catch-as-catch-can  wrest 
ling  between  Suffragettes  and  policemen  the 
English  also  hold  the  present  championship 
at  all  weights.  And  so  it  goes. 

We  in  America  have  a  range  of  sports  and 
pastimes  that  is  as  wide  as  our  continent, 
which  is  fairly  wide  as  continents  go.  In 
using  the  editorial  we  here  1  do  not  mean, 
however,  to  include  myself.  At  sport  I  am 
no  more  than  an  inoffensive  onlooker.  One 
time  or  another  I  have  tried  many  of  our 
national  diversions  and  have  found  that 
those  which  are  not  strenuous  enough  are 
entirely  too  strenuous  for  a  person  of  fairly 
settled  habits.  It  is  much  easier  to  look  on 
and  less  fatiguing  to  the  system.  I  find  that 
the  best  results  along  sporting  lines  are  at 
tained  by  taking  a  comfortable  seat  up  in 
the  grandstand,  lighting  a  good  cigar  and 
leaning  back  and  letting  somebody  else  do 
the  heavy  work.  Reading  about  it  is  also  a 
very  good  way. 

Take  fishing,  now,  for  example.  What 
can  be  more  delightful  on  a  bright,  pleasant 
afternoon,  when  the  wind  is  in  exactly  the 
right  quarter,  than  to  take  up  a  standard 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare  111 

work  on  fishing,  written  by  some  gifted 
traveling  passenger  agent,  and  with  him  to 
snatch  the  elusive  finny  tribe  out  of  their 
native  element,  while  the  reel  whirs  deliri 
ously  and  the  hooked  trophy  leaps  high  in 
air,  struggling  against  the  feathered  barb  of 
the  deceptive  lure,  and  a  waiter  is  handy  if 
you  press  the  button?  I  have  forgotten  the 
rest  of  the  description;  but  any  railroad  line 
making  a  specialty  of  summer-resort  busi 
ness  will  be  glad  to  send  you  the  full  details 
by  mail,  prepaid.  In  literature,  fishing  is 
indeed  an  exhilarating  sport;  but,  so  far  as 
my  experience  goes,  it  does  not  pan  out 
when  you  carry  the  idea  farther. 

To  begin  with,  there  is  the  matter  of 
tackle.  Some  people  think  collecting 
orchids  is  expensive — and  I  guess  it  is,  the 
way  the  orchid  market  is  at  present;  and 
some  say  matching  up  pearls  costs  money. 
They  should  try  buying  fishing  tackle  once. 
If  J.  Pierpont  Morgan  had  gone  in  for  fish 
ing  tackle  instead  of  works  of  art  he  would 
have  died  in  the  hands  of  a  receiver.  Any 
self-respecting  dealer  in  sporting  goods 
would  be  ashamed  to  look  his  dependent 


118  Cobb's  Bi //-of- Fare 

family  in  the  face  afterward  if  he  suffered 
you  to  escape  from  his  lair  equipped  for 
even  the  simplest  fishing  expedition  unless 
he  had  sawed  off  about  ninety  dollars'  worth 
of  fishing  knickknacks  on  you. 

Let  us  say,  then,  that  you  have  mortgaged 
the  old  home  and  have  acquired  enough 
fishing  tackle  to  last  you  for  a  whole  day. 
Then  you  go  forth,  always  conceding  that 
you  are  an  amateur  fisherman  who  fishes  for 
fun  as  distinguished  from  a  professional 
fisherman  who  fishes  for  fish — and  you  get 
into  a  rowboat  that  you  undertake  to  pull 
yourself  and  that  starts  out  by  weighing  half 
a  ton  and  gets  half  a  ton  heavier  at  each 
stroke.  You  pull  and  pull  until  your  spine 
begins  to  unravel  at  both  ends,  and  your 
palms  get  so  full  of  water  blisters  you  feel 
as  though  you  were  carrying  a  bunch  of 
hothouse  grapes  in  each  hand.  And  after 
going  about  nine  miles  you  unwittingly  an 
chor  off  the  mouth  of  a  popular  garbage 
dump  and  everything  you  catch  is  second 
hand.  The  sun  beats  down  upon  you  with 
unabated  fervor  and  the  back  of  your  neck 
colors  up  like  a  meerschaum  pipe;  and  after 


"EVERYTHING  YOU  CATCH 
IS  SECOND-HAND" 


CobPs  Bi //-of- Fare  121 

about  ten  minutes  you  begin  to  yearn  with  a 
great,  passionate  yearning  for  a  stiff  collar 
and  some  dry  clothes,  and  other  delights  of 
civilization. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  I  am  being  guided 
by  an  experienced  angler  it  has  been  my  ob 
servation  that  he  invariably  takes  me  to  a 
spot  where  the  fish  bit  greedily  yesterday 
and  will  bite  avariciously  tomorrow,  but, 
owing  to  a  series  of  unavoidable  circum 
stances,  are  doing  very  little  in  the  biting 
line  today.  Or  if  by  any  chance  they  should 
be  biting  they  at  once  contract  an  intense 
aversion  for  my  goods.  Others  may  catch 
them  as  freely  as  the  measles,  but  toward  me 
fish  are  never  what  you  would  call  infec 
tious.  I'm  one  of  those  immunes.  Or  else 
the  person  in  charge  forgets  to  bring  any 
bait  along.  This  frequently  happens  when 
I  am  in  the  party. 

One  day  last  summer  I  went  fishing  in  the 
Savannah  River,  and  we  traveled  miles  and 
miles  to  reach  the  fishing-ground.  We  found 
the  water  there  alive  with  fish,  and  anchored 
where  they  were  thickest;  and  then  the  per 
son  who  was  guiding  the  expedition  discov- 


122  Cob frs  Bi //-of- Fare 

ered  that  he  had  left  the  bait  on  the  wharf. 
He  is  the  most  absent-minded  man  south  of 
the  Ohio  anyhow.  In  the  old  days  before 
Georgia  went  dry  he  had  to  give  up  carry 
ing  a  crook-handled  umbrella.  He  would 
invariably  leave  it  hanging  on  the  rail.  So 
I  should  have  kept  the  bait  in  mind  myself 
—but  I  didn't,  being  engaged  at  the  time  in 
sun-burning  a  deep,  radiant  magenta.  How 
ever  it  was  not  a  fast  color— long  before 
night  it  was  peeling  off  in  long,  painful 
strips. 

Suppose  you  do  catch  something!  You 
cast  and  cast,  sometimes  burying  your  hook 
in  submerged  debris  and  sometimes  in  ten 
der  portions  of  your  own  person.  After  a 
while  you  land  a  fish;  but  a  fish  in  a  boat 
is  rarely  so  attractive  as  he  was  in  a  book. 
One  of  the  drawbacks  about  a  fish  is  that  he 
becomes  dead  so  soon — and  so  thoroughly. 

I  have  been  speaking  thus  far  of  river 
fishing.  I  would  not  undertake  to  describe 
at  length  the  joys  of  brook  fishing,  because 
I  tried  it  only  once.  Once  was  indeed  suffi 
cient,  not  to  say  ample.  On  this  occasion  I 
was  chaperoned  by  an  old,  experienced 


Cob  Ps  Bill-of-Fare  123 

brook  fisherman.  I  was  astonished  when  I 
got  my  first  view  of  the  stream.  It  seemed 
to  me  no  more  than  a  trickle  of  moisture 
over  a  bed  of  boulders — a  gentle  perspira 
tion  coursing  down  the  face  of  Nature,  as  it 
were.  Any  time  they  tapped  a  patient  for 
dropsy  up  that  creek  there  would  be  a  de 
structive  freshet,  I  judged;  but,  as  it  devel 
oped,  this  brook  was  deceptive — it  was  full 
of  deep,  cold  holes.  I  found  all  these  holes. 
I  didn't  miss  a  single  one.  While  I  was 
finding  them  and  then  crawling  out  of  them, 
my  companion  was  catching  fish.  He 
caught  quite  a  number,  some  of  them  being 
nearly  three  inches  long.  They  were 
speckled  and  had  rudimentary  gills  and 
suggestions  of  fins,  and  he  said  they  were 
brook  trout — and  I  presume  they  were;  but 
if  they  had  been  larger  they  would  have 
been  sardines.  You  cannot  deceive  me  re 
garding  the  varieties  of  fish  that  come  in 
cans.  I  would  say  that  the  best  way  to  land 
a  brook  trout  is  to  go  to  a  restaurant  and 
order  one  from  a  waiter  in  whom  you  have 
confidence.  In  that  way  you  will  avoid 
those  deep  holes. 


124  Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

Nor  have  I  ever  shone  as  a  huntsman.  If 
the  shadowy  roeshad  is  not  for  me  neither  is 
her  cousin,  the  buxom  roebuck.  Nor  do  I 
think  I  will  ever  go  in  for  mountain-climb 
ing  as  a  steady  thing,  having  tried  it.  Poets 
are  fond  of  dwelling  upon  the  beauties  of 
the  everlasting  hills,  swimming  in  purple 
and  gold — but  no  poet  ever  climbed  one.  If 
he  ever  did  he  would  quit  boosting  and  start 
knocking.  I  was  induced  to  scale  a  large 
mountain  in  the  northern  part  of  New  York. 
It  belonged  to  the  state;  and,  like  so  many 
other  things  the  state  undertakes  to  run,  it 
was  neglected.  No  effort  whatever  had 
been  made  to  make  it  cozy  and  comfortable 
for  the  citizen.  It  was  one  of  those  moun 
tains  that  from  a  distance  look  smooth  and 
gentle  of  ascent,  but  turn  out  to  be  rugged 
and  seamy  and  full  of  rocks  with  sharp  cor 
ners  on  them  at  about  the  height  of  the  aver 
age  human  knee  or  shin.  The  lady  for 
whom  that  mountain  in  Mexico,  Chapulte- 
pec,  is  named — oh,  yes,  Miss  Anna  Peck- 
would  have  had  a  perfectly  lovely  time  scal 
ing  that  mountain ;  but  I  didn't. 

After  we  had  climbed  upward  at  an  acute 


"  HE  COULD  BEAT  ME  CLIMBING, 

BUT  AT  PANTING  I  HAD  HIM  LICKED  TO  A  WHISPER ' 


Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare  121 

angle  for  several  hundred  miles — my  com 
panion  said  yards,  but  I  know  better;  it  was 
miles — I  threw  myself  prone  upon  the  softer 
surfaces  of  a  large  granite  slab,  feeling  that 
I  could  go  no  farther.  I  also  wished  to 
have  plenty  of  room  in  which  to  pant.  He 
could  beat  me  climbing,  but  at  panting  I 
had  him  licked  to  a  whisper.  He  was  a 
person  without  sympathy.  In  his  bosom  the 
milk  of  human  kindness  had  clabbered  and 
turned  to  a  brick-cheese.  He  stood  there 
and  laughed.  There  are  times  to  laugh,  but 
this  was  not  one  of  the  times.  Anyway  I  al 
ways  did  despise  those  people  who  are  built 
like  sounding  boards  and  have  fine  acoustic 
qualities  inside  their  heads — and  not  much 
of  anything  else;  but  never  did  I  despise 
them  more  than  at  that  moment.  He  sent  his 
grating,  raucous,  discordant,  ill-timed  guf 
faws  reverberating  off  among  the  precipi 
tous  crags,  and  then  he  turned  from  me  and 
went  forging  ahead. 

He  was  almost  out  of  sight  when  I  re 
membered  about  there  being  bears  on  that 
mountain;  so  I  rose  and  undertook  to  forge 
ahead  too.  I  was  not  a  great  success  at  it 


128   Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

however.  I  know  now  that  if  ever  I  should 
turn  to  a  life  of  crime  forgery  would  not  be 
my  forte.  I  do  not  forge  readily.  Eventu 
ally,  though,  I  reached  the  summit,  he  being 
already  there.  We  had  come  up  for  the 
view,  but  I  seemed  to  have  lost  my  interest 
in  views;  so,  while  he  looked  at  the  view,  I 
reclined  in  a  prostrate  position  and  resumed 
panting.  That  was  three  years  ago  and  I 
am  still  somewhat  behind  with  my  pants. 
I  am  going  to  take  a  week  off  sometime  and 
pant  steadily  and  try  to  catch  up;  but  the 
outing  taught  me  one  thing — I  learned  a 
simple  way  of  descending  a  steep  mountain. 
If  one  is  of  a  circular  style  of  construction 
it  is  very  simple.  One  rolls. 

Camping  is  highly  spoken  of,  and  I  have 
tried  camping  a  number  of  times.  When  I 
go  camping  it  rains.  It  begins  to  rain  when 
I  start  and  it  keeps  on  raining  until  I  come 
back.  It  never  fails.  I  have  often  thought 
that  drought-sufferers  in  various  parts  of  the 
country  who  seek  to  attract  rain  in  dry  spells 
make  a  mistake.  They  try  the  old-fashioned 
Methodist  way  of  praying  for  it,  or  the  new 
scientific  way  of  shooting  dynamite  bombs 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare  129 

off  and  trying  to  blast  it  out  of  the  heavens; 
when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  best  plan 
would  be  to  send  for  me  and  get  me  to  go 
camping  in  the  arid  district.  It  would  then 
rain  heavily  and  without  cessation. 

It  is  a  fine  thing  to  talk  about  the  per 
fumed  and  restful  bed  of  balsam  boughs, 
and  the  crackle  of  the  campfire  at  dusk,  and 
the  dip  in  the  mirrored  bosom  of  the  pel 
lucid  lake  at  dawn — old  Emerson  Hough 
does  all  that  to  perfection;  but  these  things 
assume  a  different  aspect  when  it  rains. 
There  are  three  conditions  in  life  when  any 
latent  selfishness  in  a  man's  being,  however 
far  down  it  may  be  buried  ordinarily,  will 
come  surging  to  the  surface — when  he  is 
courting  a  girl  against  strong  opposition; 
when  he  is  playing  a  gentleman's  game  of 
poker,  purely  for  sociability;  and  when  he 
ircamping  out  and  it  rains.  Before  a  man 
makes  up  his  mind  that  he  will  take  a  girl 
to  be  his  wife  he  should  induce  her  to  go  in 
surf  bathing  and  see  how  she  looks  when  she 
comes  out;  and  before  he  makes  up  his  mind 
that  he  will  take  a  man  to  be  his  best  friend 
he  should  go  camping  with  him  in  the  rainy 


130  Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

season — the  answer  in  both  cases  being  that 
then  he  won't  do  either  one. 

I  remember  going  camping  once  with  a 
man  who  before  that  had  appeared  to  be  all 
that  one  could  ask  in  the  way  of  a  chosen 
comrade;  but  after  we  had  spent  four  days 
cooped  up  together  in  an  eight-by-ten  tent 
that  was  built  with  sloping  shoulders,  like 
an  Englishman's  overcoat,  listening  to  the 
sough  of  the  wind  through  the  wet  pine 
trees  without,  and  dodging  the  streams  of 
water  that  percolated  through  the  dripping 
roof  within,  I  could  think  of  more  than 
seven  thousand  things  about  that  man  that 
I  cordially  disliked. 

His  whiskers  gradually  became  the  most 
distasteful  of  all  to  me.  Either  he  hadn't 
brought  a  razor  along  or  it  was  too  wet  for 
shaving — or  something;  and  his  whiskers 
grew  out,  and  they  were  bristly  and  red  in 
color,  which  was  something  I  had  not  sus 
pected  before.  As  I  sat  there  with  the  little 
rivulets  running  down  the  back  of  my  neck 
and  the  rust  forming  on  my  amalgam  fill 
ings  and  mold  on  my  shoes  and  mushrooms 
sprouting  under  my  hatband,  it  seemed  to 


CoWs  Bill-of-Fare  131 

me  that  he  had  taken  an  unfair  advantage 
of  me  by  having  red  whiskers.  Viewed 
through  the  drizzle  they  appeared  to  be  the 
reddest,  the  most  inflammatory,  the  most 
poisonous-looking  whiskers  I  ever  saw! 
They  were  too  red  to  be  natural. 

I  decided  finally  that  he  must  have  been 
scared  by  a  Jersey  bull  so  that  his  whiskers 
turned  red  in  a  single  night — and  I  was  get 
ting  ready  to  twit  him  about  it;  but  he  beat 
me  to  it.  It  seemed  that  all  this  time  he 
had  been  feeling  more  and  more  deeply  of 
fended  at  the  way  in  which  my  ears  were 
adjusted  to  my  head.  He  couldn't  make  up 
his  mind,  he  said,  which  way  he  would  hate 
me  more — with  my  ears  or  without  them; 
but  he  was  willing  to  take  a  butcher  knife 
and  experiment.  He  also  said  that,  as  an 
expert  bookkeeper,  he  wouldn't  know 
whether  to  enter  my  ears  as  outstanding 
losses  or  amounts  brought  forward.  Going 
into  those  woods  we  were  just  the  same  as 
Damon  and  Pythias ;  but  coming  out  his  bite 
would  have  been  instant  death,  and  I  felt 
toward  him  exactly  as  the  tarantula  does 


132  Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

toward  the  centipede.  We  were  the  origi 
nal  Blue-Gum  Twins. 

Coming  now  to  aquatic  sports  as  distin 
guished  from  pastimes  ashore,  I  feel  that  I 
am  better  qualified  to  speak  authoritatively, 
having  had  more  experience  in  that  direc 
tion.  Let  us  start  with  canoeing.  Canoeing 
is  a  sport  fraught  with  constant  surprises.  A 
canoeing  trip  is  rarely  the  same  thing  twice 
in  succession;  and  particularly  is  this  true 
in  streams  where  the  temperature  of  the 
water  is  subject  to  change.  It  is  compara 
tively  easy  to  paddle  a  canoe  if  you  only 
remember  to  scoop  toward  you.  You  merely 
reverse  the  process  by  which  truly  refined 
people  imbibe  soup.  Even  if  you  never 
master  the  art  of  paddling  you  may  still  get 
along  fairly  well  if  you  know  how  to  swim. 
On  the  whole  I  would  say  that  one  is  liable 
to  enjoy  a  longer  career  as  a  canoeist  where 
one  swims  but  can't  paddle,  than  where  one 
paddles  but  can't  swim. 

Approaching  the  subject  of  motor-boat 
ing  as  compared  with  sailboating,  we  find 
the  situation  becoming  complicated  and 
growing  technical.  In  sailing,  as  is  gener- 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare  133 

ally  known,  you  depend  upon  the  wind;  and 
there  are  only  two  things  the  wind  does- 
one  is  to  blow  and  the  other  is  not  to  blow. 
But  when  you  begin  to  figure  up  the  things 
that  a  motor  boat  will  do  when  you  don't 
want  it  to,  and  won't  do  when  you  do  want 
it  to,  you  are  face  to  face  with  one  of 
the  most  complicated  mathematical  jobs 
known  to  the  realm  of  mechanical  science. 
A  motor  boat  undoubtedly  has  a  larger 
and  fancier  repertoire  of  cute  tricks  and  un 
expected  ways  than  anything  in  the  nature 
of  machinery.  I  know  this  to  be  true,  be 
cause  I  have  a  relative  who  suffers  from 
motor-boatitis  in  an  advanced  form.  He  has 
owned  many  different  brands  of  motor  boats 
— that  is  one  reason,  I  think,  why  he  is  not 
wealthier;  in  fact  he  has  had  about  all  the 
kinds  there  are  except  a  kind  that  will  start 
when  you  wish  it  to  and  stop  when  you  ex 
pect  it  to.  His  motor  boats  do  nearly  every 
thing — backfire,  and  fail  to  spark,  and  clog 
up,  and  blow  up,  and  break  down,  and 
smash  up  and  drift  ashore,  and  drift  out 
from  shore,  and  have  the  asthma  and  the 
heaves  and  impediments  of  speech.;  but  he 


134   Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

has  never  yet  owned  one  that  could  be  de 
pended  upon  to  do  the  two  things  I  have 
just  mentioned. 

After  trying  various  models  and  discard 
ing  them,  he  now  has  one  of  the  most  com 
plete  motor  boats  made.  It  has  what  is 
known  as  a  hunting  cabin,  it  being  so  called, 
I  think,  because  the  moment  anybody  gets 
into  it  he  has  to  get  out  again  while  the 
owner  crawls  in  and  takes  up  all  the  seats 
and  hunts  for  something.  It  is  the  theory 
that  one  could  live  afloat  in  this  hunting 
cabin — and  so  one  could  if  one  were  only 
a  dachshund  and  inured  to  exposure.  It  is 
plenty  wide  enough  for  the  average  dachs 
hund  and  plenty  high  enough,  too,  but  not 
more  than  about  two-thirds  long  enough.  If 
one  were  a  dachshund  one  would  either 
have  to  coil  up  or  else  remain  partly  out 
doors.  Also,  on  board  is  a  galley,  which 
would  be  a  success  in  every  way  if  you  could 
find  a  style  of  cook  who  could  get  used  to 
sitting  on  one  hole  of  the  stove  while  he 
cooked  on  the  other.  One  of  those  talented 
parlor  magicians  who  does  light  housekeep 
ing  in  a  borrowed  high  hat  by  breaking  raw 


Cobb^s  Bill-of-Fare  135 

eggs  into  it  and  then  taking  out  omelet 
souffles,  might  fill  the  bill — only  I  never 
have  chanced  to  see  a  parlor  magician  yet 
who  could  crowd  himself  and  his  feet  into 
that  galley  at  the  same  time. 

The  principal  feature  of  this  motor  boat, 
however,  is  the  engine,  which  is  a  very  com 
plicated  and  beautiful  thing,  with  coils  and 
plugs  and  brakes  strewed  about  over  it  here 
and  there,  and  a  big  flywheel  superimposed 
right  in  front.  It  is  the  theory  that,  by  open 
ing  several  cocks  and  closing  several  others, 
and  adjusting  about  fifteen  or  twenty  little 
duflickers  just  so,  and  then  revolving  this 
wheel  briskly  with  a  crank  provided  for  that 
purpose,  the  engine  can  be  started.  It  is 
supposed  to  say  chug-chug  a  couple  of  times 
impatiently,  and  then  go  scooting  away, 
chug-chugging  like  an  inspired  slide-trom 
bone. 

Such  is  the  theory,  but  such  is  not  the  fact. 
I've  seen  the  owner  crank  her  until  his  back 
bone  comes  unjointed,  without  getting  any 
response  whatsoever.  And  then,  just  when 
he  is  about  to  succumb  to  hate  and  overexer- 
tion,  the  thing  says  tut-tut  reprovingly — and 


'136  Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

then  gives  one  tired  pish  and  a  low  mourn 
ful  tush  and  coughs  about  a  pint  of  warm 
gasoline  into  his  face  and  dies  as  dead  as 
Jesse  James.  I've  seen  her  do  that  time 
and  time  again;  but  if  she  ever  does  start, 
the  only  way  to  stop  her  is  to  steer  into  some 
solid  immovable  object,  such  as  the  Western 
Hemisphere. 

At  that,  motor-boating  for  an  amateur 
such  as  I  am  has  certain  advantages  over 
sailboating.  A  motor-boatist — even  the  most 
reckless  kind — knows  enough  to  stay  ashore 
when  a  West  Indian  hurricane  is  romping 
along  the  coast,  playfully  chasing  its  own 
tail  like  a  young  puppy;  but  that  kind  of  a 
situation  is  just  pie  for  your  seasoned  sail- 
boatist. 

Only  last  summer  I  had  a  very  distressing 
experience  in  connection  with  a  sailboat, 
which  was  owned  by  a  friend  of  mine — or 
perhaps  I  should  say  he  was  a  friend  of 
mine  until  this  matter  came  up.  From  the 
clubhouse  porch  I  had  often  admired  his 
boat  skimming  gracefully  over  the  bay, 
with  its  sail  making  a  white  gore  against  the 
blue  background;  and  one  day  he  invited 


"  SHE  WAS  NOT  MUCH  LARGER 
THAN  A  SOAPDISH" 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare  139 

me  to  go  out  with  him  for  a  sail.  Before  I 
had  time  for  that  second  thought  which  is  so 
desirable  under  such  circumstances,  I  found 
myself  committed  to  the  venture. 

Right  here,  though,  I  wish  to  state  that  if 
anybody  ever  gets  me  out  in  a  small  sailboat 
again  it  will  be  over  my  dead  body. 

Well,  anyway,  we  cast  off,  as  he  called  it. 
I  did  not  like  that  phrase — cast  off — it 
sounded  too  much  as  though  one  were  bid 
ding  farewell  to  all  earthly  ties — and  almost 
immediately  I  was  struck  by  other  discon 
certing  facts.  The  first  one  was  that  his 
boat,  which  had  looked  roomy  and  commo 
dious  when  viewed  from  shore,  appeared  to 
shrink  up  so  when  you  were  aboard  her. 
Really,  she  was  not  much  larger  than  a  soap- 
dish  and  not  nearly  so  reliable.  And  an 
other  thing  I  noticed  was  a  lot  of  the  angri 
est-looking  clouds  that  anybody  ever  saw, 
piling  up  on  the  horizon.  And  the  waves 
were  slopping  up  and  down,  and  giving  to 
the  water  that  dark,  forbidding  appearance 
that  is  so  inspiring  in  a  marine  painting,  but 
so  depressing  when  you  are  thrown  into 
personal  contact  with  it. 


140  Cobb's  Bill -of -Fare 

I  made  a  suggestion.  As  I  recall  now,  I 
said  something  about  waiting  until  the  ty 
phoon  was  over;  but  my  friend  grinned  in 
an  annoying,  superior  kind  of  way  and  said 
he  doubted  whether  the  wind  would  blow 
more  than  half  a  gale.  He  was  right  there 
—but  it  was  the  last  half.  Anyhow  he 
swung  her  round  and  she  heeled  away  over 
in  an  alarming  fashion,  and  we  headed  right 
into  the  center  of  the  vortex.  He  gave  me 
the  end  of  a  rope  to  hold  and  told  me  to 
swing  on  to  it,  which  I  was  very  glad  to  do, 
because  there  are  times  and  places  when  it 
gives  you  a  slight  sense  of  comfort  to  have 
anything  at  all  to  hold  to,  even  if  it  is  only  a 
rope.  On  and  on  we  careened  madly.  I 
was  so  occupied  with  barkening  to  the  howl 
of  the  mad  winds  in  the  rigging  and  watch 
ing  the  mad  waves  that,  when  he  suddenly 
called  out  something  which  sounded  like 
Hard  Ah  Lee,  I  paid  no  attention.  If  his 
fancy  led  him  in  a  moment  of  dire  peril  like 
this  to  be  yelling  for  somebody  with  a 
name  like  a  Chinese  laundryman,  it  was  no 
concern  of  mine. 

Then  he  bellowed:    "Leggo  that  sheet!" 


CobPs  Bill-of-Fare  141 

Now  I  knew  there  was  something  about  a 
sailboat  called  a  sheet,  but  I  naturally  as 
sumed  it  was  the  sail.  I  leave  it  to  any 
disinterested  person  if  a  sail,  being  white 
and  more  or  less  square  in  shape,  doesn't 
look  more  like  a  sheet  than  a  mere  rope 
does.  So,  as  I  wasn't  near  the  sail,  but  was 
merely  holding  on  to  my  rope,  I  started  to 
tell  him  I  wasn't  touching  his  blamed  old 
sheet.  But  the  words  were  never  spoken. 

The  boat  tried  to  shy  out  from  under  me 
and  came  very  nearly  succeeding.  At  the 
same  time,  she  buckjumped  and  stood  right 
up  on  one  edge,  like  a  demented  gravy  dish. 
At  the  same  moment,  also,  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean  came  aboard 
and  lit  in  my  lap,  and  something  struck  me 
alongside  the  head  with  frightful  force;  and 
something  else  scraped  me  off  the  place 
where  I  was  sitting  and  hurled  me  head 
long. 

When  I  came  to,  the  man  who  owned  the 
boat  was  scrambling  round,  stepping  on  me 
and  my  clothes,  and  grabbing  at  loose  ends, 
and  swearing;  but  as  soon  as  he  had  a  mo 
ment  to  spare  from  these  other  duties  he 


142   Cob b's  Bill-of-Fare 

called  me  a  derned  idiot!  I  was  his  guest, 
mind  you,  and  he  used  that  language  toward 
me. 

'rYou  derned  idiot!"  he  said.  "Didn't  you 
see  she  was  about  to  jibe?" 

I  told  him  in  a  dignified  manner  that  I 
certainly  did  not;  that  had  I  known  she  was 
about  to  jibe  I  would  most  certainly  have 
jobe  with  her;  that  personally  I  preferred 
any  amount  of  jibbing,  however  painful,  to 
being  drowned  first  and  then  beaten  to 
death.  I  demanded  to  know  why  he  had 
assaulted  me  upon  the  head  and  what  he 
did  it  with. 

It  developed,  though,  that  he  had  not 
struck  me  at  all.  The  boom  swung  round 
and  hit  me.  This  is  a  heavy  section  of  lum 
ber,  and  I  think  it  is  called  a  boom  from  the 
hollow,  ringing  sound  it  makes  when  dash 
ing  out  the  brains  of  amateur  sailors.  In 
my  judgment  these  booms  are  dangerous  and 
their  presence  should  not  be  permitted 
aboard  a  sailing  craft — or,  at  least,  they 
should  be  towed  a  safe  distance  aft. 

But  I  digress.  Referring  to  the  devastat 
ing  and  angry  elements  that  encompassed  us, 


"THINK  OF  BEING  LAID  FACE  DOWNWARD 

FIRMLY  ACROSS  A  SINEWY  KNEE  AND  BEATEN  FORTY-LOVE 

WITH  ONE  OF  THOSE  HARD  CATGUT  RACKETS!" 


CoWs  Bill-of-Fare  145 

the  owner  of  the  boat  said  there  was  now  a 
nice,  fresh  breeze  blowing,  and  that  he 
hated  to  miss  the  fun;  but  if  I  preferred  to 
he  would  run  back  in  and  hug  the  shore. 
Hug  it!  I  was  ready  to  kiss  it!  What  I 
wanted  to  do  was  to  take  that  dear  shore  in 
both  arms  and  press  my  throbbing  cheeks 
against  her  mossy  breast,  and  swear  that 
nothing  should  ever  again  come  between  me 
and  the  solid  part  of  the  continent  of  North 
America. 

So,  by  a  sheer  miracle  escaping  death  on 
the  way,  we  returned,  and  I  betook  myself 
off  of  that  craft  and  headed  straight  for  the 
clubhouse.  I  wish  to  take  advantage  of 
this  opportunity,  however,  to  deny  the  re 
port  subsequently  circulated  by  certain 
malicious  persons  to  the  effect  that  I  was 
scared.  Any  passing  agitation  I  may  have 
betrayed  was  due  to  my  relief  at  finding 
that  the  cyclone,  despite  its  fury,  had  not 
swept  the  North  Atlantic  Coast  bare.  I 
also  wish  to  deny  the  story  that  I  was  pale. 
I  have  one  of  those  complexions  that  come 
and  go.  Anybody  who  knows  me  will  tell 
you  that. 


146  CobPs  Bill-of-Fare 

However,  I  have  decided  to  give  up  sail- 
boating;  and,  to  a  person  of  my  shape  and 
conservative  tendencies,  this  leaves  the 
field  of  outdoor  sport  considerably  circum 
scribed.  I  am  too  peaceful  for  baseball  and 
not  warlike  enough  for  football.  I  had 
thought  some  of  taking  up  tennis,  but  have 
been  deterred  by  the  fact  that  so  many  young 
women  excel  at  tennis.  I  could  stand  being 
licked  by  another  man,  but  the  idea  of  fac 
ing  one  of  those  sinewy  young-lady  cham 
pions  whose  stalwart  face  looks  out  at  you 
from  the  sporting  page  is  repellent  to  me. 

I  can  understand  why  so  very  few  of  these 
ultra-athletic  college  girls  marry  off  early. 
A  man  instinctively  is  drawn  to  the  cling- 
ing-vine  type  of  female.  If  there  is  any 
sturdy  oak  round  the  place  he  wants  to  be  it. 
But  what  I  cannot  understand  is  how  these 
brawny  young  persons  can  be  the  grand 
daughters  and  the  great  granddaughters 
of  those  fragile  creatures,  with  wasp  waists 
and  tiny  feet,  who  lived  back  in  the 
Early  Victorian  period  and  suffered  from 
megrims  and  vapors.  I'll  venture  that 
none  of  this  generation  ever  had  a  vapor  in 


Cob Ps  Bill-of-Fare  141 

her  life;  and  as  for  megrims,  she  wouldn't 
know  one  if  she  met  it  in  the  big  road.  She 
may  be  muscle-bound  and  throw  a  splint 
sometimes,  or  get  the  Charley  horse;  but 
megrims  are  not  for  her — believe  me! 

Oh,  I've  seen  them  often — the  adorable 
yet  brawny  creatures,  leaping  six  feet  into 
the  air  and  smacking  a  defenseless  tennis 
ball  with  such  vigor  that  it  started  right  off 
in  the  general  direction  of  Sioux  Falls  at 
the  rate  of  upwards  of  ninety  miles  an  hour, 
and  coming  down  flat-footed  without  hav 
ing  jostled  so  much  as  a  hairpin  out  of 
place.  You  may  worship  them,  all  right 
enough,  but  it  is  safer  to  do  so  at  long  dis 
tance. 

Suppose  you  were  hooked  up  for  life  to 
a  lady  champion  and  you  happened  to  dis 
please  her?  She'd  spank  you!  Think  of 
being  laid  face  downward  firmly  across  a 
sinewy  knee  and  beaten  forty-love  with  one 
of  those  hard  catgut  rackets!  The  very 
suggestion  is  intolerable  to  a  believer  in  the 
supremacy  of  the  formerly  sterner  sex. 

So  I  have  decided  not  to  take  up  tennis; 
but  the  doctor  says  I  need  exercise,  and  I 


148  Cobb's  Bill-of-Fare 

think  I  will  go  in  for  golf,  which  is  a  young 
man's  vice  and  an  old  man's  penance.  I 
have  already  taken  the  preliminary  steps. 
I  have  joined  a  country  club;  I  have  also 
chosen  my  caddie.  He  is  a  deaf-and-dumb 
caddie,  who  has  never  been  known  to  laugh 
at  anything. 

That  is  why  I  chose  him. 


